Flooding death toll soars to 11,300 in Libya's coastal city of Derna, aid group says
The death toll in Libya's coastal city of Derna has soared to 11,300 as search efforts continue following a massive flood fed by the breaching of two dams in heavy rains, the Libyan Red Crescent said Thursday.
Transcript
00:00 Residents in the Libyan city of Derna have been burying thousands of family members,
00:06 friends and neighbours in mass graves. Dead bodies still line the streets as people try
00:12 to cope with the scale of destruction from flooding. Over 3,000 burials took place on
00:18 Thursday with another 2,000 being processed. But officials say the death toll could triple.
00:25 So I cannot really confirm the final numbers but it's really a high level of magnitude
00:30 and I'm afraid we will hear really large numbers, maybe even more than what has been confirmed
00:36 so far.
00:37 Libya's eastern administration in Benghazi city approved a budget of 10 billion dinars,
00:42 nearly 2 billion euros, and parliament announced the formation of a committee to manage the
00:48 aftermath of the floods. Over 11,300 people are now confirmed to have died in the disaster,
00:55 as more could be buried under drifts of mud and concrete, and rescuers have struggled
00:59 to bring in heavy equipment on the destroyed roads.
01:02 [SWOOSH]