UN Revises Previous High Libya Death Toll to 3,958 – News18
Last Updated: September 18, 2023, 06:42 IST
Cars and rubble sit in a street in Derna, Libya, after it was flooded by heavy rains. Devastating floods in eastern Libya left a trail of destruction, with at least 2,000 dead and fears of a much higher toll. (Image: AP Photo)
UN revises Libya flood death toll to 3,958, with over 9,000 still missing. Tragedy in Derna prompts questions about accuracy
The UN has revised its previous death toll from the floods in Libya, according to a revised report updated on Sunday morning. It is now stated that at least 3,958 people have died due to flooding, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). The revised report by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) also states that more than 9,000 people are still missing.
Earlier, OCHA said at least 11,300 people were dead in Derna, due to devastating flooding. The UN body cited the Libyan Red Crescent with the figures for the previous report. “We’re going with figures just verified by WHO,” Farhan Haq, Deputy Spokesman for the UN Secretary-General, told CNN on Sunday.
On Sunday, the Libyan Red Crescent Society said that it never released the high death figure tolls to the UN from flooding in Derna. When asked how or why the UN cited the death toll incorrectly, Haq said, “in a lot of different tragedies we end up revising our numbers. So that’s just what’s happening here.”
“Standard procedure is we work with different parties trying to make sure our numbers are cross-checked. Whenever we do these revisions it’s because our numbers are being cross-checked,” Haq explained. The deputy spokesperson said the numbers for the death toll are fluid, “it can go upward or downward.”
Two dams above Derna burst early Monday under the pressure from rain dropped by a storm. The pent-up water swept blocks of low-lying downtown Derna out to the Mediterranean Sea. Many said they heard loud explosions as the dams exploded. A flood several meters high rolled down a mountainside into the city.
Images made about 400 miles above the earth’s surface show that the storm left a brown layer of mud and dirt across the city. Untold numbers are buried under mud and debris includes overturned cars and chunks of concrete. The floods have displaced at least 30,000 people in Derna, according to the U.N.’s International Organization for Migration.
Like war-torn Syria, Libya has been through its own years of conflict. The oil-rich North African country has been split between rival governments in the east and west since 2014, backed by with various militia forces and international patrons. Derna is governed by Libya’s eastern administration, where military commander Khalifa Hiftar wields significant power.
(With agency inputs)
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