DERNA, Libya: A year since two dams burst upstream from the eastern Libyan city of Derna, unleashing a wall of water that swept away thousands of people, its residents no longer hold out hope of finding many of their loved ones.
For Libya, the disaster on the night of Sept. 10 was unprecedented as torrential rains from Mediterranean storm Daniel gushed down steep mountainsides. Those who survived in the coastal city recount nightmarish scenes, with bodies piling up quicker than authorities could count them.
Mohsen Al-Sheikh, a 52-year-old actor and theater administrator, lost 103 of his extended family — only four bodies of his relatives were recovered.
Scores of other families were also nearly wiped out, with only a few surviving members, Al-Sheikh says. “Those who were found were found, and those who weren’t, weren’t.”
Now, the townspeople and city officials are trying to rebuild even though they will never bury those who disappeared forever.
Deadly flooding in Derna’s riverbed valley
Residents of Derna woke up to the loud explosions of the two dams breaking. What followed was a living nightmare.
The surging waters, two stories high, wiped out entire neighborhoods, roads, bridges and residential buildings across the port city. Thousands of people were instantly washed away, drowning within minutes, and tens of thousands more were displaced.
Estimates from aid organizations put the number of deaths between 4,000 and 11,000, and the number of missing people between 9,000 and 10,000. Another 30,000 were displaced.
Houses in the Al-Maghar neighborhood, where Al-Sheikh lives, were built on a hillside of a dry riverbed valley, where the water rushed into. The slope meant many houses had a lower and upper entrance on opposite sides — a design that Al-Maghar had come up with many years earlier. Some fleeing families used the back doors to escape to higher ground.
Al-Maghar’s design may have saved hundreds during the flooding, although it wasn’t built to serve an emergency purpose. That night, many also fled by running into their neighbors’ homes and up the hill, through the higher-level doors.
Derna residents ended up calling them “the doors of safety.”
That night, Shaker Alhusni left his own home to help a neighbor, only to return and find his house full of water. His family was able to flee to higher floors.
A report published not long after the disaster found that the torrential rains were 50 times more likely to occur and 50 percent more intense because of human-caused climate change. The analysis was conducted by the World Weather Attribution group, which aims to quickly evaluate the possible role of climate change in extreme weather events.
In late July, Libya’s criminal court sentenced 12 local officials responsible for managing the country’s dam facilities for negligence in the dams’ maintenance. Sentences ranged between nine to 29 years in prison, according to Libya’s Attorney General’s Office. ٍ
Rebuilding amid political uncertainty
The oil-rich Libya has been in chaos since 2011, when an Arab Spring uprising, backed by NATO, ousted longtime dictator Muammar Qaddafi, who was later killed.
Derna, with its diverse mix of residents of Turkish, Andalusian and Cretan origin, was for years a cultural center of the North African country. But it was also deeply affected by Libya’s civil war and more than a decade of unrest. For several years after the 2011 uprising, it fell under the influence of the Daesh group and other extremists.
Now, one of Libya’s rival authorities is putting serious resources into rebuilding Derna — the east-based government and the forces of Gen. Khalifa Haftar and his self-styled Libyan National Army. A rival administration is based in the capital of Tripoli, to the west, and enjoys the support of most of the international community.
Last September, the east-based Libyan parliament agreed to allocate 10 billion Libyan dinars (around $2 billion) to launch a development fund that would help rebuild Derna and impacted areas around the city.
A city committee for maintenance and reconstruction began building new homes and provided financial compensation for the survivors, including Al-Sheikh.
Across Derna’s riverbed, widened by the floodwaters, Al-Sahaba Bridge is being rebuilt along with Al-Sahaba Mosque next door.
There are plans to build 280 apartments for those who lost their homes, according to Salem Al-Sheikh, an engineer at the construction site that’s part of a residential project launched in May. Al-Sheikh told The Associated Press that 60 percent of reconstruction works across Derna has been completed.
More support for the survivors
International observers say that the country needs much more support to help the coastal city get back to a semblance of the life it once had.
“There remains a critical need for coordinated, effective and efficient reconstruction and long-term development,” said Stephanie Koury, head of the UN’s mission to Libya, or UNSMIL, said in a statement marking the first anniversary of Derna’s disaster.
In July, Liz Throssell, spokesperson for the UN Human Rights Office, said reconstruction efforts and helping authorities identify human remains are crucial.
“We reiterate the calls of affected communities for coordinated, transparent, and national efforts for reconstruction,” she said. “It is crucial to provide assistance ... in the identification of human remains and the dignified reburial of the bodies.”
Plans to rebuild the dams were being discussed last year, but it remains unconfirmed whether those plans will move forward.
That leaves Al-Sheikh uncertain whether he’ll be able to return to his house or will it be completely demolished like others that remain along the Derna Valley to avoid another similar tragedy in the future.
A Libyan city scarred by disaster tries to rebuild a year after deadly flooding
https://arab.news/2ssdn
A Libyan city scarred by disaster tries to rebuild a year after deadly flooding
- For Libya, the disaster on the night of Sept. 10 was unprecedented as torrential rains from Mediterranean storm Daniel gushed down steep mountainsides
- Those who survived in the coastal city recount nightmarish scenes, with bodies piling up quicker than authorities could count them
Libyan coast guards train in Greece under plan to stem migrant flows
Relations between Greece and Libya have been strained by a maritime boundary agreement signed in 2019 between the Tripoli-based Libyan government and Turkiye, Greece’s long-standing foe.
A tender that Greece launched this year to develop hydrocarbon resources off Crete revived those tensions, while a spike in migrant flows from North Africa to Europe has prompted Athens to deploy frigates off Libya and pass legislation banning migrants arriving from Libya by sea from requesting asylum.
The division of Libya by factional conflict into eastern and western sections for over a decade has further complicated relations. Greece says it is determined to continue talking to both the Tripoli-based government and a parallel administration based in Benghazi to the east.
So far, coast guard officers from eastern Libya have been training in Greece, including areas such as patrolling and search and rescue operations. Coast guard officers from western Libya are expected to also participate in the training, the sources said.
As part of efforts to improve relations, Athens last week invited Libya’s internationally recognized government in Tripoli to start talks on demarcating exclusive economic zones in the Mediterranean Sea.
Missions from both countries are expected to hold talks on maritime zones in the coming months, the Greek sources said.
Israeli rights groups break taboo with accusations of genocide
- Israeli human rights groups brace for backlash
- Deeply sensitive accusation in Israel, founded after Holocaust
JERUSALEM: When two human rights groups became the first major voices in Israel to accuse the state of committing genocide in Gaza, breaking a taboo in a country founded after the Holocaust, they were prepared for a backlash.
B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights Israel released reports at a press conference in Jerusalem on Monday, saying Israel was carrying out “coordinated, deliberate action to destroy Palestinian society in the Gaza Strip.”
That marked the strongest possible accusation against the state, which vehemently denies it. The charge of genocide is deeply sensitive in Israel because of its origins in the work of Jewish legal scholars in the wake of the Nazi Holocaust. Israeli officials have rejected genocide allegations as antisemitic.
So Sarit Michaeli, B’Tselem’s international director, said the group expected to face attacks for making the claim in a country still traumatized by October 7, 2023.
“We’ve looked into all of the risks that we could be facing. These are legal, reputation, media risks, other types of risk, societal risks and we’ve done work to try and mitigate these risks,” said Michaeli, whose organization is seen as being on the political fringe in Israel but is respected internationally.
“We are also quite experienced in attacks by the government or social media, so this is not the first time.” It’s not unrealistic “to expect this issue, which is so fraught and so deeply contentious within Israeli society and internationally to lead to an even greater reaction,” she said.
Israel’s foreign ministry and prime minister’s office did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
Shortly after the reports were released on Monday, government spokesperson David Mencer said: “Yes, of course we have free speech in Israel.” He strongly rejected the reports’ findings and said that such accusations fostered anti-semitism abroad.
Some Israelis have expressed concern over Israel’s military campaign in Gaza that has killed more than 60,000 Palestinians, destroyed much of the enclave and led to widespread hunger.
An international global hunger monitor said on Tuesday a famine scenario was unfolding in the Gaza Strip, with malnutrition soaring, children under five dying of hunger-related causes and humanitarian access severely restricted.
“For me, life is life, and it’s sad. No one should die there,” said nurse Shmuel Sherenzon, 31.
But the Israeli public generally rejects allegations of genocide.
Most of the 1,200 people killed and the 251 taken hostage to Gaza in the October 7 attacks in southern Israel were civilians, including men, women, children and the elderly.
In an editorial titled “Why are we blind to Gaza?” published on the mainstream news site Ynet last week, Israeli journalist Sever Plocker said images of ordinary Palestinians rejoicing over the attacks in and even following the militants to take part in violence made it almost impossible for Israelis to feel compassion for Gazans in the months that followed.
“The crimes of Hamas on October 7 have deeply burned – for generations – the consciousness of the entire Jewish public in Israel, which now interprets the destruction and killing in Gaza as a deterrent retaliation and therefore also morally legitimate.”
Israel has fended off accusations of genocide since the early days of the Gaza war, including a case brought by South Africa at the International Court of Justice in the Hague that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemned as “outrageous.”
While Israeli human rights groups say it can be difficult working under Israel’s far-right government, they don’t experience the kind of tough crackdowns their counterparts face in other parts of the Middle East.
Israel has consistently said its actions in Gaza are justified as self-defense and accuses Hamas of using civilians as human shields, a charge the militant group denies.
Israeli media has focused more on the plight of hostages taken by Hamas, in the worst single attack on Jews since the Holocaust.
In this atmosphere, for B’Tselem’s Israeli staff members to come to the stark conclusion that their own country was guilty of genocide was emotionally challenging, said Yuli Novak, the organization’s executive director.
“It’s really incomprehensible, it’s a phenomena that the mind cannot bear,” Novak said, choking up.
“I think many of our colleagues are struggling at the moment, not only fear of sanctions but also to fully grasp this thing.”
Guy Shalev, executive director of Physicians for Human Rights Israel, said the organization faced a “wall of denial.”
It has been under pressure for months and is expecting a stronger backlash after releasing its report.
“Bureaucratic, legal, financial institutions such as banks freezing accounts including ours, and some of the challenges we expect to see in the next days...these efforts will intensify,” he told Reuters.
Turkiye to start providing Syria with natural gas on Aug 2, minister says
- Turkiye to start providing Syria with natural gas on Aug 2, minister says
ANKARA: Turkiye will start exporting natural gas from Azerbaijan to Syria from Saturday, the energy minister said on Wednesday.
Syria’s Islamist authorities, who toppled Bashar Assad in December, are seeking to rebuild the country’s infrastructure and economy after almost 14 years of civil war.
The conflict badly damaged Syria’s power infrastructure, leading to cuts that can last for more than 20 hours a day.
“We will start exporting natural gas from Azerbaijan to Aleppo via Kilis,” a province in southernmost Turkiye near the Syrian border, Energy Minister Alparslan Bayraktar said.
In May, Syrian Energy Minister Mohammad Al-Bashir said Damascus and Ankara had reached a deal for Turkiye to supply natural gas to the war-torn country via a pipeline in the north.
Gas-rich Azerbaijan is a historic ally of Turkiye which maintains close ties with the Syrian transitional government.
At least 5 dead in clashes between Uganda, South Sudan forces: official
- It was not clear what triggered the clashes on Monday between the Ugandan People’s Defense Forces (UPDF) and government troops in Central Equatoria State that were confirmed by South Sudanese People’s Defense Force
JUBA: At least five South Sudan security forces were killed in clashes with the Ugandan army near the countries’ shared border earlier this week, local officials said Wednesday.
Uganda has a history of involvement in impoverished South Sudan, and has long provided military support to President Salva Kiir, including a deployment of special forces since March.
It was not clear what triggered the clashes on Monday between the Ugandan People’s Defense Forces (UPDF) and government troops in Central Equatoria State that were confirmed by South Sudanese People’s Defense Force (SSPDF).
Police in Kajo Keji county, where the clashes took place, said “two SSPDF officers, two prison officers and a police officer” were killed, according to a statement from local authorities on Wednesday.
The statement quoted local army commander Henry Buri as saying the Ugandan forces “were heavily armed with tanks and artilleries,” and had targeted 19 “joint operation” forces.
There was no comment from the Ugandan government.
An earlier statement by local county officials said there had been “loss of lives and injuries from both sides.”
Uganda sent troops to support Kiir when civil war broke out in the country in 2013, just two years after it gained independence from Sudan.
The civil war between Kiir and his long-time rival, Riek Machar, lasted five years and left some 400,000 dead before a power-sharing agreement was reached in 2018.
Uganda again deployed special forces in March this year as Kiir moved once again against Machar, eventually placing him under house arrest.
That has all but buried the power-sharing deal and triggered conflict between the army and members of a militia from Machar’s ethnic Nuer community.
The Ugandan army has been accused of using chemical weapons, namely barrel bombs containing a flammable liquid that killed civilians, against Nuer militias in South Sudan’s northeast.
Uganda has denied the accusations.
African Union says does ‘not recognize’ Sudan parallel govt
- A bitter two-year civil war in Sudan has pitted the government against the Rapid Support Forces
- The AU called on all member states and the international community to reject the fragmentation of Sudan
ADDIS ABABA: The African Union said on Wednesday it would not recognize a “so-called parallel government” in Sudan, urging its members to follow suit.
A bitter two-year civil war in Sudan has pitted the government against the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which announced it was forming a government and appointed a prime minister on Saturday.
The AU’s Peace and Security Council “called on all AU Member States and the international community to reject the fragmentation of Sudan and not recognize the so-called “parallel government” which has serious consequences on the peace efforts and the existential future of the country,” it said in a statement.
