The General Authority for Search and Identification of Missing Persons announced that its teams had exhumed 225 bodies of floods victims from the Al-Dhahr Al-Hamar cemetery in Derna.
The Authority explained in a statement that this effort was authorized by the Public Prosecutor’s Office to take DNA samples from the exhumed bodies, saying that reference samples were taken from 180 bodies that were exhumed from the city’s Dhahr Al-Hamar cemetery.
The Authority also explained that it had buried 81 bodies in Daniel Storm Shuhadaa cemetery in the Al-Fatayeh cemetery in the city of Derna after completing legal aspects. It said that the total number of bodies had not yet been determined, highlighting the possibility of accurately identifying the number after exhuming all the bodies.
The Authority also confirmed the continuation of its work by opening files for the families of the victims by the Family Registration Department in the Bab Tobruk and the Shiha areas.
The number of open files reached 632, with 450 DNA samples taken from the families of the victims, which will be referred to laboratories for genetic analysis and placed in the Authority's database.