by Christopher Scicluna
VALLETTA (Reuters) – A Maltese rescue team found hundreds of bodies on a beach in the flood-hit Libyan town of Derna on Friday, Malta’s civil protection department said on Saturday.
“There were probably 400, but it’s hard to say,” Natalino Bezzina, who leads the Maltese team, told the Times of Malta newspaper.
Malta deployed a team of 72 rescuers from the army and civil protection on Wednesday. A team of four first found a group of seven bodies, including those of three children, inside a cave by the sea.
Entire neighborhoods of Derna, one of the main towns in eastern Libya, were swept away or buried in mud after two dams south of the town burst overnight from Sunday to Monday, freeing torrents of water in the bed of a usually dry river.
Natalino Bezzina told Maltese media that a small team stumbled upon the half-submerged cave and found bodies inside.
As they continued their operations, they were joined by Libyan rubber boats who were also searching for victims and survivors. They then came across a small bay filled with debris and several hundred corpses.
According to the International Organization for Migration mission in Libya, more than 5,000 people are presumed dead and 3,922 deaths have been recorded in hospitals. Around 38,640 people have been displaced in the flood-hit region.
The actual number of deaths could be much higher, according to authorities.
(French version Benjamin Mallet)
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