Libya Flood: Derna Mayor’s House Burnt Down
The mayor’s home in the Libyan city of Derna has been burnt down, as hundreds of protesters demanded answers for last week’s catastrophic flood.
They gathered on Monday night at the city’s landmark Sahaba Mosque, many chanting for top officials in Libya’s eastern government to be sacked.
Derna’s whole city council has now been dismissed.
Internet and telephone access have also been shut down and journalists ordered to leave in a media crackdown.
More than 10,000 people are officially missing after two old and dilapidated dams burst, flooding the city.
Figures given for the number of people known to have died have varied widely but the UN says it has confirmed close to 4,000 deaths.
The UN now says one of its teams has been refused permission to enter Derna.
“We can confirm that search and rescue teams, emergency medical teams and UN colleagues who are already in Derna continue to operate,” Najwa Mekki, of the UN’s humanitarian body OCHA, told Reuters news agency on Tuesday.
“However, a UN team was due to travel from Benghazi to Derna today but were not authorized to proceed,” she added.
The home of Derna’s mayor, Abdulmenam al-Ghaithi, has become a focal point for people’s anger.
Residents say they were not sufficiently warned by officials, who they believe must have known a huge amount of rainfall was coming.
They say they were also given a stay-at-home warning rather than being told to evacuate, although officials deny this.
Since the ousting of long-time leader Muammar Gaddafi, Libya has been riven by power struggles and currently has two governments – a UN-recognised one based in Tripoli, and another in the country’s east backed by warlord Gen Khalifa Haftar.
He has been calling the flooding a natural disaster but many Libyans disagree, saying the eastern government had neglected the dams despite prior warnings about their fragile condition.
Speaking from his hospital bed in Benghazi, 48-year-old Abdelqader al-Omrani told the AFP news agency that he and other people living near the dams had “warned the municipality and demanded repairs” after spotting leaks two years ago. “They [now] have our deaths on their conscience,” he said.
Scientists from the World Weather Attribution group said Libya’s conflict and poor dam maintenance had turned extreme weather into a humanitarian disaster, but noted that up to 50% more rain pounded eastern Libya because of global warming caused by human activity.
On Tuesday, the day after the protests, a minister in eastern Libya’s government announced that all journalists had been asked to leave Derna, and accused them of hampering the work of rescue teams.
“Have no doubt, this is not about health or safety, but about punishing Dernawis [Derna’s residents] for protesting,” said Emadeddin Badi of the Atlantic Council think tank, in a post on X (formerly Twitter).
BBC/Jide Johnson.
