Maltese rescue team finds ‘hundreds’ of dead on Libyan beach

VALLETTA, (Reuters): A Maltese rescue team found hundreds of dead bodies on a beach in the flood-stricken Libyan city of Derna on Friday, the Malta Civil Protection Department said on Saturday.

“There were probably about 400, but it is difficult to say,” Natalino Bezzina, who is leading the Maltese team, told the Times of Malta newspaper.

Malta deployed a team of 72 rescuers from the army and the civil protection department on Wednesday.

The discovery was made by a four-person team which first found a group of seven bodies, including those of three children, inside a cave by the sea.

The bodies are believed to have been washed out to sea by heavy flooding after rainfall from Storm Daniel caused two dams to collapse, sweeping away a quarter of the coastal city.

Bezzina told Maltese media that a small CPD team came across the cave that was half submerged and found bodies inside.

As they continued the search, they were joined by Libyan dinghies also searching for casualties and survivors. Then they came across a small bay filled with debris and several hundred dead bodies.

Meanwhile, Libyan rescue teams struggled to search for the missing on Saturday (September 16), digging through mountains of debris to find bodies which had been swept away towards the sea, six days after floods devastated swathes of the coastal city of Derna.

At Derna’s seafront, where a wrecked car could be seen perched on top of concrete storm breakers and driftwood was strewn across muddy pools, diggers worked to clear the path for rescue teams and a helicopter scanned the sea for bodies.

More than 450 bodies had been recovered in the past three days from the seashore, including 10 from under the rubble, said Kamal Al-Siwi, the official in charge of missing people.

The International Organization for Migration mission in Libya said more than 5,000 people were presumed dead, with 3,922 deaths registered in hospitals, and over 38,640 were displaced in the flood-stricken region.

The true death toll could be far higher, officials say.