Hundreds have lost their lives, thousands others are between injured and missing so far in different cities and towns in eastern and southeastern Libya due to the torrents of rainwater and strong winds of Storm Daniel that has been ravaging the region since the early hours of Saturday.
In an official death toll account, the Libyan Prime Minister-designate in eastern region, Osama Hammad, told reporters Monday afternoon that they had registered 2000 deaths only in the coastal city of Derna, confirming that entire neighborhoods had been ravaged and washed away by Storm Daniel. While Hammad's Interior Minister, Essam Abu Zariba, also said that the number of missing persons could be over 5000.
Footage on social media from Derna showed a demolished area where rainwater and the two dams of the city helped drift entire neighborhoods, thus opening the door for a possibly appealing death toll in that area alone, not to mention other cities like Al-Bayda and surrounding towns, especially in Al-Jabal Al-Akhdar.
The Government of National Unity and Presidential Council declared three days of mourning and flew the Libyan flag at half mast to honor the victims of Storm Daniel disaster, while the Foreign Affairs Committee of the House of Representatives issued a distress call to the international community to help Libya respond to the weather catastrophe, saying the situation was sprawling out of control in some areas.
Storm Daniel arrived in eastern Libyan coast in the early hours of Saturday, after it had hit a number of Mediterranean countries, especially Greece and Bulgaria. However, once it hit Libya, the scale of destruction became bigger given the poor infrastructure and the nature of the areas within the storm's zone.
