Call to end mass burials in flood aftermath

THE World Health Organization (WHO) and other aid groups called on authorities in Libya yesterday to stop burying flood victims in mass graves after a UN report showed that more than 1 000 people had so far been buried in that manner since the country was hit by floods.

Storm Daniel in the Mediterranean triggered the worst floods in decades in Libya on Sunday.

A torrent washed away untold numbers of people into the Mediterranean and whole districts of Derna, a city in eastern Libya, after two dams collapsed and reduced the area to an apocalyptic wasteland where

“We urge the authorities in communities touched by tragedy to not rush forward with mass burials or mass cremations,” said Dr Kazunobu Kojima, medical officer for biosafety and biosecurity in WHO’s Health

Emergencies Programme, in a joint statement sent out by the UN health agency with the International Committee of the Red Cross and the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.

The statement called for burials that are managed better in well demarcated and documented individual graves, saying that hasty burials can lead to long-lasting mental distress for family members as well as social and legal problems.

Meanwhile, rescuers continued their searches yesterday despite fading hope of finding more flood survivors in the disaster that has claimed at least 5 500 lives and left another 10 000 missing in the war-torn country.

The WHO for the Eastern Mediterranean, estimates that the disaster has affected 1.5 to 1.8million people in Libya.

United Nations aid chief Martin Griffiths said yesterday that its humanitarian office had sent a disaster coordination team of 15 people who had been redeployed from Morocco which suffered an earthquake last week.

Access to Derna remains severely hampered as roads and bridges have been destroyed and power and phone lines cut to wide areas, where at least 30 000 people are now homeless.

Climate experts have linked the disaster to the impacts of a heating planet, combined with Libya’s decaying infrastructure.

Storm Daniel gathered strength during an unusually hot summer and had earlier lashed Turkey, Bulgaria and Greece, killing at least 27 people. |

BLACKSKY via AFP THIS satellite picture created and released by BlackSky shows the destruction in the wake of floods in Libya after the Mediterranean storm Daniel dumped heavy rain on the eastern coastal city of Derna. A devastating flood washed away whole districts of Derna, killed thousands of people with thousands more still missing after two dams collapsed. |