Derna’s violent past and difficult relationship with Haftar’s administration “proved calamitous during the recent natural disaster,” Harchaoui said, adding that authorities made “grievous miscalculations” when responding to the crisis.
‘We knew ahead of time’: A decade of turmoil left Libya unprepared for a catastrophic storm
Nadeen Ebrahim
Following a civil war and a political standoff that has lasted almost a decade, Libya is struggling to deal with a catastrophic flood that is believed to have killed at least 5,300 people and left over 10,000 missing in the country’s northeast.
Split between two rival administrations since 2014 and having failed to hold presidential elections, Libya faces an uphill battle when it comes to severe natural disasters. The North African country’s fragmented state has made it unprepared for the flooding, experts say, and has the potential to hamper delivery of urgently needed humanitarian aid.
The Libyan coastal town of Derna is one of the most severely hit cities by the floods that followed Storm Daniel, which formed on September 5, inundating parts of Greece before moving into the Mediterranean.
But the storm is only the latest misery to befall the town.
Split between two rival administrations since 2014 and having failed to hold presidential elections, Libya faces an uphill battle when it comes to severe natural disasters. The North African country’s fragmented state has made it unprepared for the flooding, experts say, and has the potential to hamper delivery of urgently needed humanitarian aid.
The Libyan coastal town of Derna is one of the most severely hit cities by the floods that followed Storm Daniel, which formed on September 5, inundating parts of Greece before moving into the Mediterranean.
But the storm is only the latest misery to befall the town.
It was the scene of a bloody battle with ISIS in 2015, and then in 2017 became the target of an intense military campaign by Khalifa Haftar – a renegade commander who controls swathes of eastern Libya – as the last bastion of opposition to his hold on the region.
With the city in desperate need of aid, it is unclear how it will be delivered and distributed as Derna lies in a part of the country controlled by a government most of the international community doesn’t recognize. . .
‘We knew ahead of time’
Derna, where emergency response workers say hospitals are no longer operational and bodies have been left on sidewalks outside the morgues, lies some 300 kilometers (190 miles) east of Benghazi and falls under the control of Haftar’s administration.
- A city of nearly 100,000, it was the epicenter of ISIS’ 2015 debut in Libya, Harchaoui said. Following liberation from ISIS in late 2017, the city resisted control by Haftar, who in 2017 said he would “choke” it with a siege when it was controlled by Islamists. It has been on sour terms with the commander ever since.
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