Global aid effort intensifies for flood-stricken Libya

DERNA, Libya: A global aid effort for Libya gathered pace on Thursday after a tsunami-sized flash flood killed more than 4,000 people, with thousands more missing -- a death toll the UN blamed in part on the legacy of years of war and chaos.

The enormous surge of storm water burst two upstream dams late on Sunday and reduced the city of Derna to an apocalyptic wasteland where entire city blocks and untold numbers of people were washed into the Mediterranean.

“Within seconds the water level suddenly rose,” recounted one injured survivor who said he was swept away with his mother in the late-night ordeal before they both managed to cling onto and scramble into an empty building downstream.

“The water was rising with us until we got to the fourth floor, the water was up to the second floor,” the unidentified man said from his hospital bed, in testimony published by the Benghazi Medical Centre.

“We could hear screams. From the window I saw cars and bodies being carried away by the water. It lasted an hour or an hour and a half -- but for us, it felt like a year.”Officials in the port city of Derna including the mayor, Abdulmenam al-Ghaithi, believe 20,000 people may have died. At least 5,500 people have been confirmed dead.

Hundreds of body bags now line Derna´s mud-caked streets, awaiting mass burials, as traumatised and grieving residents search mangled buildings for missing loved ones and bulldozers clear streets of debris and mountains of sand.

“This disaster was violent and brutal,” said Yann Fridez, the head of the Libya delegation of the International Committee of the Red Cross, which had a team in Derna when the floodwaters hit.