A week after a tsunami-sized flash flood devastated the Libyan coastal city of Derna, sweeping thousands to their deaths, the international aid effort to help the grieving survivors slowly gathered pace Sunday.
Search-and-rescue teams wearing face masks and protective suits kept up the grim search for bodies or any survivors in the mud-caked wasteland of smashed buildings, crushed cars and uprooted trees.
Traumatised residents, 30,000 of whom are now homeless in Derna alone, are in dire need of clean water, food, shelter and basic supplies amid a growing risk of cholera, diarrhoea, dehydration and malnutrition, UN agencies warn.
“In this city, every single family has been affected,” said one resident, Mohammad al-Dawali.
Another, Mohamed al-Zawi, 25, recounted how he saw “a large mountain of water bringing with it cars, people, belongings… and pouring everything out into the sea”.
Emergency response teams and relief goods have been deployed from France, Iran, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates, with more on the way from multiple other nations.
The aid effort has been hampered by the political division of Libya, which was plunged into years of war and chaos after a 2011 NATO-backed uprising led to the overthrow and killing of veteran dictator Moamer Kadhafi.
The oil-rich North African country now remains split between two rival governments — a UN-backed administration in the capital Tripoli, and one based in the disaster-hit east.
Britain’s foreign secretary, James Cleverly, said “the big challenge with Libya” was that, unlike Morocco and Turkey which were hit by major earthquakes this year, it lacks a fully functioning government to coordinate with.
“Sadly, in the eastern part of Libya, we just don’t have that, and that is why we are not seeing the international support on the ground … we would wish,” he told the BBC.
“I’m not gonna say it is impossible, of course not. But it is so much harder.”
