The Libyan army chief has been killed in an air crash in Turkey, Libya’s prime minister has said.
Gen Mohammed Ali Ahmed al-Haddad and four others were on board a Falcon 50 aircraft flying out of the Turkish capital, Ankara, on Tuesday evening.
In a post on X, Turkish Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya said signal with the business jet was lost at 20:52 local time (17:52 GMT) – about 42 minutes after it took off from Ankara’s airport.
The Tripoli-bound jet had issued an emergency landing request before contact was lost. The aircraft’s wreckage was later found south-west of Ankara, and an investigation is now under way into what caused the crash.
Libya’s Gen Mohammed Ali Ahmed al-Haddad (left) died just hours after holding talks with Turkish Defence Minister Yasar Guler [Reuters]
In a later post on X, Yerlikaya wrote that police had spotted the debris near the village of Kesikkavak, in the Haymana district.
He said the “public will be informed of further developments”.
In Libya, Abdul Hamid Dbeibeh, the prime minister of the country’s internationally-recognised Government of National Unity (GNU), said he had received news of the deaths of Gen Haddad and other senior Libyan military officials on board the jet.
The prime minister called it a “great loss” for the nation, saying Libya had “lost men who served their country with sincerity and dedication”.
Gen Haddad and his team had been in Turkey for talks aimed at further strengthening military and security co-operation between the two countries.
Turkey has played an increasingly dominant role in Libya after intervening in 2019 to prevent an army from the east of the country driving out the internationally-recognised government in Tripoli, and has built close political, military and economic ties.
At least four people have been killed when two boats carrying migrants and asylum seekers capsized off Libya’s coast, according to the Libyan Red Crescent.
In a statement on Saturday, the organisation said the incident occurred off the coastal city of al-Khums on Thursday night.
It said the first boat was carrying 26 people from Bangladesh, four of whom died.
The second boat carried 69 people, including two Egyptians and dozens of Sudanese, the Red Crescent added, without specifying their fate. Eight of them were children, it said.
Al-Khums is a coastal city, some 118km (73 miles) east of the capital, Tripoli.
Libya has become a transit route for migrants and asylum seekers fleeing conflict and poverty to Europe since the 2011 fall of dictator Muammar Gaddafi during a NATO-backed uprising.
Pictures released by the Libyan Red Crescent showed a line of bodies in black plastic bags laid out on the floor, while the volunteers are seen providing first aid to the survivors.
Other pictures show the rescued people wrapped in thermal blankets sitting on the floor.
The statement added that coastguards and Al-Khums Port Security Agency participated in the rescue operation. Adding that the bodies were handed over to the relevant authorities based on instructions by the city’s public prosecution.
On Wednesday, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said that at least 42 migrants went missing and were presumed dead after a rubber boat sank near the Al Buri oilfield, an offshore facility north-northwest of the Libyan coast.
In mid-October, a group of 61 bodies of migrants were recovered on the coast west of Tripoli. In September, IOM said at least 50 people had died after a vessel carrying 75 Sudanese refugees caught fire off Libya’s coast.
Several states, including the United Kingdom, Spain, Norway and Sierra Leone, urged Libya last week at a United Nations meeting in Geneva to close detention centres where rights groups say migrants and refugees have been tortured, abused and sometimes killed.
PARIS (Reuters) -Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s appeal against a conviction for criminal conspiracy related to illegal Libyan financing for his successful 2007 presidential bid will be heard from March 16 to June 3, a Paris appeal court said on Thursday.
Sarkozy walked out of jail this week after a court ruled he should not serve his prison sentence pending the appeal, contrary to the initial ruling. He will now seek to overturn the five-year sentence imposed in September.
“Truth will prevail. This is a fact that life teaches us,” Sarkozy wrote on X after returning home.
Sarkozy was found guilty of conspiring to procure funds for his 2007 presidential campaign bid from late Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.
The imprisonment of the former conservative leader, who was president from 2007 to 2012, marked a stunning downfall for a politician who once bestrode the global stage.
(Reporting by Inti Landauro; editing Richard Lough)
As the USS Gerald Ford aircraft carrier sails to the Caribbean, the U.S. military continues striking drug-carrying boats off the Venezuelan coast and the Trump administration debates what to do about Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro, one thing seems certain: Venezuela and the western hemisphere would all be better off if Maduro packed his bags and spent his remaining years in exile.
This is certainly what Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado is working toward. This year’s Nobel Prize laureate has spent much of her time recently in the U.S. lobbying policymakers to squeeze Maduro into vacating power. Constantly at risk of detention in her own country, Machado is granting interviews and dialing into conferences to advocate for regime change. Her talking points are clearly tailored for the Trump administration: Maduro is the head of a drug cartel that is poisoning Americans; his dictatorship rests on weak pillars; and the forces of democracy inside Venezuela are fully prepared to seize the mantle once Maduro is gone. “We are ready to take over government,” Machado told Bloomberg News in an October interview.
But as the old saying goes, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. While there’s no disputing that Maduro is a despot and a fraud who steals elections, U.S. policymakers can’t simply take what Machado is saying for granted. Washington learned this the hard way in the lead-up to the war in Iraq, when an opposition leader named Ahmed Chalabi sold U.S. policymakers a bill of goods about how painless rebuilding a post-Saddam Hussein Iraq would be. We all know how the story turned out — the United States stumbled into an occupation that sucked up U.S. resources, unleashed unpredicted regional consequences and proved more difficult than its proponents originally claimed.
To be fair, Machado is no Chalabi. The latter was a fraudster; the former is the head of an opposition movement whose candidate, Edmundo González Urrutia, won two-thirds of the vote during the 2024 Venezuelan presidential election (Maduro claimed victory anyway and forced González into exile). But just because her motives are good doesn’t mean we shouldn’t question her assertions.
Would regime change in Caracas produce the Western-style democracy Machado and her supporters anticipate? None of us can rule it out. But the Trump administration can’t bank on this as the outcome of a post-Maduro future. Other scenarios are just as likely, if not more so — and some of them could lead to greater violence for Venezuelans and more problems for U.S. policy in Latin America.
The big problem with regime change is you can never be entirely sure what will happen after the incumbent leader is removed. Such operations are by their very nature dangerous and destabilizing; political orders are deliberately shattered, the haves become have-nots, and constituencies used to holding the reins of power suddenly find themselves as outsiders. When Hussein was deposed in Iraq, the military officers, Ba’ath Party loyalists and regime-tied sycophants who ruled the roost for nearly a quarter-century were forced to make do with an entirely new situation. The Sunni-dominated structure was overturned, and members of the Shia majority, previously oppressed, were now eagerly taking their place at the top of the system. This, combined with the U.S. decision to bar anyone associated with the old regime from serving in state positions, fed the ingredients for a large-scale insurgency that challenged the new government, precipitated a civil war and killed tens of thousands of Iraqis.
Regime change can also create total absences of authority, as it did in Libya after the 2011 U.S.-NATO intervention there. Much like Maduro today, Moammar Kadafi was a reviled figure whose demise was supposed to pave the way for a democratic utopia in North Africa. The reality was anything but. Instead, Kadafi’s removal sparked conflict between Libya’s major tribal alliances, competing governments and the proliferation of terrorist groups in a country just south of the European Union. Fifteen years later, Libya remains a basket case of militias, warlords and weak institutions.
Unlike Iraq and Libya, Venezuela has experience in democratic governance. It held relatively free and fair elections in the past and doesn’t suffer from the types of sectarian rifts associated with states in the Middle East.
Still, this is cold comfort for those expecting a democratic transition. Indeed, for such a transition to be successful, the Venezuelan army would have to be on board with it, either by sitting on the sidelines as Maduro’s regime collapses, actively arresting Maduro and his top associates, or agreeing to switch its support to the new authorities. But again, this is a tall order, particularly for an army whose leadership is a core facet of the Maduro regime’s survival, has grown used to making obscene amounts of money from illegal activity under the table and whose members are implicated in human rights abuses. The very same elites who profited handsomely from the old system would have to cooperate with the new one. This doesn’t appear likely, especially if their piece of the pie will shrink the moment Maduro leaves.
Finally, while regime change might sound like a good remedy to the problem that is Venezuela, it might just compound the difficulties over time. Although Maduro’s regime’s remit is already limited, its complete dissolution could usher in a free-for-all between elements of the former government, drug trafficking organizations and established armed groups like the Colombian National Liberation Army, which have long treated Venezuela as a base of operations. Any post-Maduro government would have difficulty managing all of this at the same time it attempts to restructure the Venezuelan economy and rebuild its institutions. The Trump administration would then be facing the prospect of Venezuela serving as an even bigger source of drugs and migration, the very outcome the White House is working to prevent.
In the end, María Corina Machado could prove to be right. But she is selling a best-case assumption. The U.S. shouldn’t buy it. Democracy after Maduro is possible but is hardly the only possible result — and it’s certainly not the most likely.
Daniel R. DePetris is a fellow at Defense Priorities.
PARIS—Former President Nicolas Sarkozy began a five-year prison sentence on Tuesday, marking an unprecedented downfall for a French ex-head of state who rose to power as a political outsider with blunt law-and-order rhetoric.
A motorcade of police escorted the 70-year-old from his home in the tony 16th arrondissement to the gates of Paris-La Santé prison in the heart of the French capital. There, guards took him into custody, leading him down to a basement office where he underwent a search and had his fingerprints taken. He then received an inmate number and had his mug shot taken before guards brought him to his cell in the isolation ward.
Paris — France’s former president Nicolas Sarkozy became the first previous head of a European Union state to be jailed on Tuesday, proclaiming his innocence as he entered a Paris prison. France’s right-wing leader from 2007 to 2012, Sarkozy was found guilty last month of seeking to acquire funding from Muammmar Qaddafi’s Libya for the campaign that saw him elected.
AFP journalists saw the 70-year-old — who has appealed the verdict — leave his home, and after a short drive flanked by police on motorbikes, enter the La Sante prison in the French capital.
“Welcome Sarkozy!”, “Sarkozy’s here,” AFP reporters heard convicts shouting from their cells.
In a defiant message posted on social media as he was being transferred, Sarkozy again denied any wrongdoing.
“It is not a former president of the republic being jailed this morning, but an innocent man,” he said in the post. “I have no doubt. The truth will prevail.”
Former French president Nicolas Sarkozy and his wife Carla Bruni are seen leaving their home, Oct. 21, 2025, in Paris, France.
Pierre Suu/Getty
Sarkozy was handed a five-year jail term in September for criminal conspiracy over a plan for late Libyan dictator Qaddafi to fund his electoral campaign. Qaddafi was killed in 2011 — the first leader killed amid the “Arab Spring” uprisings that rocked the Middle East as a number of countries with long-time dictatorial regimes faced popular revolts.
After his September 25 verdict, Sarkozy had said he would “sleep in prison — but with my head held high.”
Dozens of supporters and family members had stood outside the former president’s home from early Tuesday, some holding up framed portraits of him.
“Nicolas, Nicolas! Free Nicolas,” they shouted as he left his home, holding hands with his wife, singer Carla Bruni.
Earlier they had sung the French national anthem as neighbors looked on from their balconies.
“This is truly a sad day for France and for democracy,” said Flora Amanou, 41.
Sarkozy’s lawyer Christophe Ingrain said a request had been immediately filed for Sarkozy’s release.
The Paris appeals court in theory has two months to decide whether to free him pending an appeals trial, but the delay is usually shorter.
“He will be inside for at least three weeks to a month,” Ingrain said.
France’s former president Nicolas Sarkozy waves to supporters as he leaves his residence to present himself to La Sante Prison to serve a five-year prison sentence after being convicted of criminal conspiracy over a plan for late Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi to help fund his 2007 electoral campaign, in Paris, France, Oct. 21, 2025.
Jerome Gilles/NurPhoto/Getty
Sarkozy is the first French leader to be incarcerated since Philippe Petain, the Nazi collaborationist head of state who was jailed after World War II.
Sarkozy told Le Figaro newspaper he will be taking with him a biography of Jesus and a copy of “The Count of Monte Cristo,” a novel in which an innocent man is sentenced to jail but escapes to take revenge.
Sarkozy facing likely solitary confinement
Sarkozy is likely to be held in a 95 square foot cell in the prison’s solitary confinement wing to avoid contact with other prisoners, prison staff told AFP.
In solitary confinement, prisoners are allowed out of their cells for one walk a day, alone, in a small yard. Sarkozy will also be allowed visits three times a week.
The former French presidents multiple legal woes
Sarkozy has faced a flurry of legal woes since losing his re-election bid in 2012.
He has also been convicted in two other cases.
In one, he served a sentence for graft — over seeking to secure favors from a judge — under house arrest while wearing an electronic ankle tag, which was removed after several months in May.
In another, France’s top court is to rule next month in a case in which he is accused of illegal campaign financing in 2012.
In the so-called “Libyan case”, prosecutors said his aides, acting in Sarkozy’s name, struck a deal with Qaddafi in 2005 to illegally fund his victorious presidential election bid two years later.
Investigators believe that in return, Qaddafi was promised help to restore his international image after Tripoli was blamed for the 1988 bombing of a passenger jet over Lockerbie, Scotland, and another over Niger in 1989, killing hundreds of passengers.
Libya leader Muammar Qaddafi and French President Nicolas Sarkozy are seen arriving for a dinner at the Elysee Palace in Orly, France, Dec. 10, 2007.
Thomas SAMSON/Gamma-Rapho/Getty
The court convicted him of criminal conspiracy over the plan, but it did not conclude that Sarkozy received or used the funds for his campaign.
It acquitted him on charges of embezzling Libyan public funds, passive corruption and illicit financing of an electoral campaign.
Sarkozy had already been stripped of France’s highest distinction, his Legion of Honor, following the earlier graft conviction.
Six out of 10 people in France believe the prison sentence to be “fair,” according to a survey of more than 1,000 adults conducted by pollster Elabe. But Sarkozy still enjoys support on the French right and has on occasion had private meetings with President Emmanuel Macron.
Macron welcomed Sarkozy to the Elysee Palace on Friday, telling the press this week: “It was normal, on a human level, for me to receive one of my predecessors in this context.”
Nicolas Sarkozy will be the first French President to go to prison. The 70-year-old politician has been found guilty by the Paris Criminal Court of criminal conspiracy in the case of suspected financing of his 2007 campaign by Muammar Gaddafi.
The sentence was handed down on Thursday with a deferred committal order, meaning that Sarkozy will not be going to prison immediately. But the provisional execution of the sentence means that it cannot be suspended by an appeal. The former president will be incarcerated in about a month’s time. Like any prisoner, he will be able to apply for a modified sentence. As he is over 70, he will even be able to request this immediately after his sentence begins.
The news of Sarkozy’s sentencing came as a political shock. Leaving the courtroom, the former president described the decision as “extremely serious for the rule of law” and “the confidence we can have in justice.” He continued: “I will assume my responsibilities. I will comply with the summonses of the courts. And if they absolutely want me to sleep in prison, I’ll sleep in prison. But with my head held high. I am innocent.”
The former president was also fined 100,000 euros and stripped of his civil rights. However, he was acquitted of the bribery charges against him. In reading out the 400 pages of deliberations, the president of the 32nd chamber stated that the legal proceedings had not made it possible to “demonstrate that the money that left Libya” had “ultimately” been used to finance his campaign.
“In the court’s view, the material elements of the bribery offense have not been established,” argued head judge Nathalie Gavarino, explaining the acquittal of the bribery charges. The judges did, however, find that “as Minister and President of the UMP,” Sarkozy had “allowed his close collaborators and political supporters, over whom he had authority and who acted in his name,” to solicit the Libyan authorities “in order to obtain or attempt to obtain financial support in Libya with a view to obtaining financing for the 2007 campaign.”
“I am therefore condemned for having allegedly allowed two of my collaborators to come up with the idea of illegally financing my campaign,” said the former president as he left the courtroom.
A total of 12 defendants were on trial last March in this case, including the former head of state and three former ministers. Sarkozy was charged with “concealment of misappropriation of public funds,” “passive corruption,” “illegal financing of an electoral campaign,” and “criminal conspiracy.” He was facing up to ten years in jail, the prosecution having requested seven years.
CAIRO (AP) — A boat carrying dozens of migrants trying to reach Europe capsized off the coast of Libya, leaving more than 60 people dead, including women and children, the U.N. migration agency said.
The shipwreck, which took place overnight between Thursday and Friday, was the latest tragedy in this part of the Mediterranean Sea, a key but dangerous route for migrants seeking a better life in Europe. Thousands have died, according to officials.
The U.N.’s International Organization for Migration said in a statement late Saturday that the boat was carrying 86 migrants when strong waves swamped it off the town of Zuwara on Libya’s western coast and that 61 migrants drowned, according to survivors.
“The central Mediterranean continues to be one of the world’s most dangerous migration routes,” the agency wrote on social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter.
The European Union’s border agency said in a statement Sunday that its plane located the partially deflated rubber boat Thursday evening in Libya’s search and rescue zone.
“The people were in severe danger because of adverse weather conditions, with waves reaching heights of 2.5 meters (8.2 feet),” the agency, known as Frontex, said.
Alarm Phone — a hotline for migrants in distress — said in a tweet that some migrants onboard reached out to the volunteer group who in turn alerted authorities including the Libyan coastguard, “who stated that they would not search for them.”
A spokesman for the Libyan coast guard was not immediately available for comment.
Libya has in recent years emerged as the dominant transit point for migrants fleeing war and poverty in Africa and the Middle East, even though the North African nation has plunged into chaos following a NATO-backed uprising that toppled and killed longtime autocrat Moammar Gadhafi in 2011.
More than 2,250 people died on the central European route this year, according to Flavio Di Giacomo, an IOM spokesperson.
It’s “a dramatic figure which demonstrates that unfortunately not enough is being done to save lives at sea,” Di Giacomo wrote on X.
According to the IOM’s missing migrants project, at least 940 migrants were reported dead and 1,248 missing off Libya between Jan. 1 and Nov. 18.
The project, which tracks migration movements, said about 14,900 migrants, including over 1,000 women and more than 530 children, were intercepted and returned to Libya this year.
In 2022, the project reported 529 dead and 848 missing off Libya. Over 24,600 were intercepted and returned to Libya.
Human traffickers in recent years have benefited from the chaos in Libya, smuggling in migrants across the country’s lengthy borders, which it shares with six nations. The migrants are crowded onto ill-equipped vessels, including rubber boats, and set off on risky sea voyages.
The abuse often accompanies attempts to extort money from the families of the imprisoned migrants before allowing them to leave Libya on traffickers’ boats to Europe.
The story has been corrected to show that the shipwreck took place overnight between Dec. 14-15.
Associated Press journalist Renata Brito contributed from Barcelona, Spain.
CAIRO — A boat carrying dozens of migrants trying to reach Europe capsized off the coast of Libya, leaving more than 60 people dead, including women and children, the U.N. migration agency said.
Saturday’s shipwreck was the latest tragedy in this part of the Mediterranean Sea, a key but dangerous route for migrants seeking a better life in Europe. Thousands have died, according to officials.
The U.N.’s International Organization for Migration said in a statement the boat was carrying 86 migrants when strong waves swamped it off the town of Zuwara on Libya’s western coast and that 61 migrants drowned, according to survivors.
“The central Mediterranean continues to be one of the world’s most dangerous migration routes,” the agency wrote on social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter.
Alarm Phone — a hotline for migrants in distress — said in a tweet that some migrants onboard reached out to the volunteer group who in turn alerted authorities including the “Libyan coastguard who stated that they would not search for them.”
A spokesman for the Libyan coast guard was not immediately available for comment.
Libya has in recent years emerged as the dominant transit point for migrants fleeing war and poverty in Africa and the Middle East, even though the North African nation has plunged into chaos following a NATO-backed uprising that toppled and killed longtime autocrat Moammar Gadhafi in 2011.
More than 2,250 people died on the central European route this year, according to Flavio Di Giacomo, an IOM spokesperson.
It’s “a dramatic figure which demonstrates that unfortunately not enough is being done to save lives at sea,” Di Giacomo wrote on X.
According to the IOM’s missing migrants project, at least 940 migrants were reported dead and 1,248 missing off Libya between Jan. 1 and Nov. 18.
The project, which tracks migration movements, said about 14,900 migrants, including over 1,000 women and more than 530 children, were intercepted and returned to Libya this year.
In 2022, the project reported 529 dead and 848 missing off Libya. Over 24,600 were intercepted and returned to Libya.
Human traffickers in recent years have benefited from the chaos in Libya, smuggling in migrants across the country’s lengthy borders, which it shares with six nations. The migrants are crowded onto ill-equipped vessels, including rubber boats, and set off on risky sea voyages.
The abuse often accompanies attempts to extort money from the families of the imprisoned migrants before allowing them to leave Libya on traffickers’ boats to Europe.
AT least 61 people, including children, have been killed in a “tragic shipwreck” after a boat carrying 86 migrants left Libya.
The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) in Libya made the announcement on social media on Saturday.
1
At least 61 people are thought to have died in the tragedy. Image shows an overcrowded wooden boat off the coast of Libya in November 2021 (file photo)Credit: AP
The organisation quoted survivors as saying the boat, carrying around 86 people, departed the Libyan city of Zwara.
The tragedy comes after British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak warned that illegal migration to Europe could “overwhelm” the continent.
He suggested a change was needed in international law to tackle the issue.
At a meeting with Italian conservatives in Rome, Mr Sunak said “enemies” could use immigration as a “weapon” by “deliberately driving people to our shores to try to destabilise our society”.
During the day-long trip to Rome, Mr Sunak met Italian Prime Minster Giorgia Meloni, with whom he has developed a strong partnership.
They also held talks with Albania‘s prime minister Edi Rama, another ally in their efforts to crack down on illegal migration.
Number 10 said that after the talks Mr Sunak and Ms Meloni had agreed to co-fund a project that would see the two countries “promote and assist the voluntary return” of migrants currently stuck in Tunisia.
Mr Sunak said: “If we do not tackle this problem, the numbers will only grow. It will overwhelm our countries and our capacity to help those who actually need our help the most.
“If that requires us to update our laws and lead an international conversation to amend the post-war frameworks around asylum, then we must do that.
“Because if we don’t fix this problem now, the boats will keep coming and more lives will be lost at sea.”
Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk was among those at the Atreju event, which has been attended by former Donald Trump ally Steve Bannon and Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban in the past.
A migrant died in the Channel yesterday, with Downing Street calling it a “stark reminder” of just how dangerous the crossings are.
A second migrant was left in a critical condition when a boat sank in the English Channel just after midnight yesterday with 66 rescued and taken to safety.
The Home Secretary James Cleverly said the incident which took place five miles off the northern coast “horrific reminder of the people smugglers’ brutality”.
More than 29,000 migrants have arrived in the UK this year after crossing the Channel.
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “vertical of power” – the way in which the entire structure of Russian political power rests on one man – has undergone profound stress testing in the wake of the Wagner mercenary group’s aborted march on Moscow in June.
But everything is now business as usual, and the remnants of Wagner are back in the government’s control, if Kremlin messaging is to be believed.
In a televised meeting Friday, Putin met with Russia’s Deputy Defense Minister Yunus-Bek Yevkurov and former Wagner commander Andrey Troshev, according to a partial transcript published by the Kremlin.
The meeting was held in a long-familiar format. Putin was seated at the head of a conference table with briefing papers and notes, making some general remarks before settling down to official business. The language was sober, competent and relatively substance-free: It could have been a routine meeting with a regional governor to discuss economic plans, at least judging by the official readout.
But unpack the language, and Putin’s Friday meeting appeared to put a reassuring gloss on the Russian government’s attempt to bring the mercenary group to heel. Troshev – who goes by the call sign, ‘Sedoy,’ meaning ‘grey hair’ – is the man Putin tapped to run the mercenary outfit after its founder Yevgeny Prigozhin’s dramatic fall from grace.
After leading the group’s insurrection this summer and then accepting an apparent deal to end it, Prigozhin died in late August when his private jet plummeted from the skies over Russia’s Tver region. But the damage that Prigozhin did to Putin’s image of infallibility has lingered.
So Putin on Friday did one of the things he does best: Delving into the minutiae of governing.
“I would like to talk to you about issues of a social nature,” Putin told Troshev, without naming Wagner. “You maintain relationships with your comrades with whom you fought together, and now you continue to carry out these combat missions.”
Continued Putin: “We have created the ‘Defenders of the Fatherland’ fund, and I have said many times and want to emphasize again: regardless of the status of the person who performs or has performed combat missions, social guarantees must be absolutely the same for everyone.”
By dangling the carrot of “social guarantees,” one might conclude that the Russian government will be taking on the system of cash handouts and compensation that Wagner fighters in Ukraine enjoyed under Prigozhin’s leadership, something that won the mercenary leader some measure of loyalty. That such guarantees accrue “regardless of status” would appear to acknowledge that mercenary activities are technically proscribed by Russian law.
The Russian leader also alluded to an earlier offer made to Wagner fighters after the short-lived rebellion: Sign contracts with the Russian ministry of defense, or head for neighboring Belarus. Wagner’s future in Belarus has since been thrown into doubt and the Russian government appears to be moving more energetically to bring the remnants of Wagner into conventional military structures, along with all the benefits that might entail.
“At the last meeting, we talked about the fact that you will be involved in the formation of volunteer units that can perform various combat missions, primarily, of course, in the zone of a special military operation,” Putin said, using the official doublespeak for the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
“You yourself fought in such a unit for more than a year. You know what it is, how it’s done, you know about the issues that need to be resolved in advance so that combat work goes on in the best and most successful way.”
Russian state news agency RIA Novosti reported Friday that Troshev “is already working with the defense ministry” – citing Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov – signaling that he will not be a freelance entrepreneur as Prigozhin was.
But that doesn’t answer the somewhat broader question of what the Russian state plans to do with all the work it has outsourced to Wagner in Africa, the Middle East and elsewhere. Wagner fighters have been active in several African countries, including Mali, the Central African Republic, and Libya.
The presence of Yevkurov in the meeting may offer one clue. In late August, Yevkurov led a Russian military delegation to the Libyan city of Benghazi to meet with the Libyan National Army, led by the renegade general Khalifa Haftar.
Wagner has supported the Libyan National Army for several years, reportedly backing Haftar’s 2019-2020 military campaign against the Tripoli-based government. The US military says Wagner has also used Libya as a logistical foothold, flying cargo flights into bases in eastern Libya to resupply its operations there.
Evidence has also emerged that Wagner has used bases in Libya to supply Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces.
Wagner has long acted as an often-deniable extension of Russian foreign policy. If Friday’s meeting is any guide, Yevkurov appears to be a point man for future Wagner activity while Troshev takes on a different brief: overseeing Wagner 2.0 for the war in Ukraine.
In the days that followed the devastating floods in the Libyan city of Derna, reports emerged of survival – a six-year-old boy plucked from the water from a third-floor balcony, a father saving his daughter by putting her in the fridge, an infant found alive floating in the water. Such stories are impossible to verify but are a glimmer of hope people want to cling to.
Torrential rainfall and the collapse of two dams flooded the coastal city, sweeping entire neighborhoods into the Mediterranean on September 10. Close to 4,000 people died in the floods and 9,000 more are still unaccounted for, according to the World Health Organization. While the missing are presumed dead, their bodies still trapped under debris or in the sea, many still hope their loved ones could still be alive.
Abu Bakr thought his relatives perished in the catastrophic flood, until he saw a picture on social media of a child rescued from the water that looks like his nephew. It set him on a search mission that took him to field hospitals and shelters for the displaced.
Schools-turned-shelters in Derna list the names of their inhabitants on their doors to help people like Abu Bakr. A stream of people go from one to another to go through the lists every day, hoping to find a familiar name.
In the mayhem of the first few days, survivors, the injured and the displaced were taken to other cities in eastern Libya. People lost their phones and mobile networks were down, making it difficult for survivors to reach their families. Hundreds of bodies were buried in mass graves without visual identification, and officials only managed to take DNA samples of recovered bodies days after the floods hit. Officials say it could take up to a year before these bodies are exhumed for identification.
“My family thought I was dead and started taking condolences,” Karima El-Kilany, 62, tells CNN. Water flooded her house and her husband clung to a collapsed ceiling until neighbors rescued them. It took days for her to get on Facebook and read the eulogies written for her and her husband, she says.
She sits on a mattress in a school theater-turned-shelter for the displaced. Next to her, Salma, a teacher and mother of four, is tending to her 17-year-old daughter, who’s ill and shell-shocked.
Salma, who only gave her first name and agreed to be filmed covering her face, finds it difficult to accept her new reality. “Maybe I’m too paranoid. There are 30 families in this room,” she says, describing how she struggles to sanitize the mattresses her kids sleep on. “It’s difficult to suddenly find all your neighbors inside your house. Imagine that. If you make problems, then you become suspicious.”
“I hope to wake up one day (and) find the city still standing. Find the people. Find my mother,” Salma says. “I lost my mother, my brother, my sisters. I went back to search for my mother, I went through the names, but nothing. But, I’m hopeful,” she adds.
At a nearby shelter, Salem el-Na’as of the Libyan Red Crescent scrolls through the strangers’ messages on his phone. They are all from people looking for loved ones, sending him names, pictures and details. “The messages don’t stop. I have to put the phone on flight mode just to be able to write down the information I get,” he says.
These efforts were hampered by another drop in mobile network coverage earlier this week. While the two-day blackout started hours after hundreds of protesters called for accountability on Monday, officials said it was due to infrastructure failure when excavators hit a fiber optics cable.
Grief has morphed into anger. Like the sea slowly regurgitating the houses and lives thrown into its belly, more residents were questioning the negligence and mismanagement that led to the collapse of the two dams. Protesters chanted against Agilah Saleh, the speaker of the eastern-based parliament that also supports the self-styled Libyan National Army (LNA) that controls the city.
This week ushered a waning of the solidarity that briefly united a country divided by a decade of war. Officials of the eastern-based government were increasingly expressing concerns about “infiltrators” from the western-based and internationally recognized government and “extremist groups” taking advantage of the aid convoys arriving in the city. Several LNA officials told CNN at least a dozen men were arrested in Derna.
Activists said that several residents and protesters were arrested.
“Political division still exist but what’s important (is) that all the relevant institutes are on the ground regardless of where they are based,” Mohamed Eljarh, spokesman of the Supreme Committee of Emergency and Response, said in a press conference Friday. “We should overcome the political divide on the ground,” he told CNN.
The emergency committee held a meeting with Derna representatives after disbanding the municipal council to include them in the decision making, Eljarh announced on Friday.
“This is one of the ways to deal with the anger, grievances and concerns,” he told CNN.
The city that was buzzing with rescuers, journalists, visiting diplomats and volunteers bringing aid from across Libya, got a lot quieter by the time the CNN team left on Wednesday. Officials said they were worried about the spread of infections especially in areas where dead bodies are believed to be trapped under mud and rubble.
Close to 60 local recovery workers were hospitalized on Tuesday suffering from diarrhea and vomiting, which the minister of health of the eastern-based government said were infections common in such situations. He said at this stage there are no signs of an endemic spreading in the city.
Throughout this week, excavators cleared paths for vehicles through the rubble. Local health workers were spraying the damaged buildings and streets with strong disinfectants.
While officials denied giving city-wide evacuation orders, several areas were cordoned off. Access to the city was restricted and only a handful of regional and international networks, including CNN, were allowed to stay for a few more days.
Yet, in streets ravaged by the floods, residents of the buildings still standing were adamant on staying in their homes. Those who lost their homes, like Salma, want to stay in the city, hoping international aid groups would provide temporary housing.
“We tried evacuation in 2018. I was displaced from my home and neighborhood for two years. I experienced the destitution that comes with displacement. I paid a high price and there was no compensation,” Moftah Al-Hanshiry says. His building still holds the scars of previous wars and battles that Derna witnessed in the past decade.
Fueled by endemic distrust of local politicians and leaders, he says he would only leave his home if a responsible entity like the World Health Organization issues the order. Otherwise, he says, “I’d rather die than leave.”
Elisabeth Brawis a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and adviser at Gallos Technologies and a regular columnist for POLITICO.
In the 17th century, the Italian chess player Gioachino Greco created the world’s first chess handbook. One of the moves he recorded was the Queen’s Gambit, an ingenious opening in three parts.
Almost exactly 300 years later, his compatriot Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni is about to launch a Queen’s Gambit of her own — in foreign policy. And much like Greco’s move, it involves several interlinked steps that, if executed successfully, could yield great dividends.
When Greco began his pioneering manuscript detailing entire chess matches, he was already considered one of the world’s best players. By contrast, Meloni was hardly a household name outside of Italy before leading her party to victory in the country’s parliamentary elections last year.
The world didn’t really know what to expect — especially when it came to foreign policy. Since then, however, Meloni has been surefooted on issues ranging from Ukraine to China’s Belt and Road Initiative. And when heads of state and government gather to address the world’s most pressing challenges at the United Nations General Assembly this week, the Italian prime minister will outline her Queen’s Gambit.
Meloni’s move involves several interconnected steps that deal with the national-security risks posed by climate change, strengthening the Euro-Atlantic alliance and helping African countries become more stable and secure. “Meloni has recently talked a great deal about the need to look at the entire global chessboard without losing sight of any area or piece,” her foreign policy advisor Ambassador Francesco Taló told me.
“For example, by moving the queen toward the East, we risk not noticing the bishop coming from Africa,” he added.
One could argue that the urgent issues we currently face are so interlinked, every head of government needs to develop a Queen’s Gambit. “In today’s situation, you can’t have vertical policy lines,” noted Taló, who previously served as Italy’s ambassador to NATO. “So many things are interconnected.”
But the need for such a strategy is particularly obvious in Italy, which sits at the nexus of Europe, Africa and the Middle East, and is a key participant in the globalized economy — as well as a similarly crucial participant in the West’s defense against Russia and its support of Ukraine. Then add to that the serious disruption coming every country’s way as artificial intelligence and climate change inexorably advance.
These real-world challenges are clearly not as neat as a chessboard, and the foreign policy moves have to be executed simultaneously rather than sequentially — but the intricacy of the strategy is the same.
Take climate change: To protect its astonishing number of UNESCO World Heritage sites — not to mention its famous viniculture and agriculture — Italy needs carbon reductions not just at home but around the world. Of course, far more than Italy’s stunning sites and food hangs in the balance here — without a significant reduction in carbon emissions, sections of Africa risk becoming uninhabitable, which would force even more people to make their way to Europe via Italy.
During the first half of this year, over 73,000 boat migrants reached the country — more than double the number from all of 2021. And if the world exceeds the crucial 1.5-degree average temperature increase, the number of those having to flee their homes will be many times that.
Over 73,000 boat migrants reached the shores of Italy in the first half of 2023 | Antonio Masiello/Getty Images
Just last week, thousands of Libyans died and thousands of others were left homeless when Storm Daniel pounded the country and collapsed a pair of dams. Meloni had phone calls with Libya’s two rival prime ministers, one after the other, the day after the disaster struck, and committed to assisting the country.
The U.N. Climate Change Summit COP28, which will be held in Dubai this December, will face this intricate task of addressing climate change even as the global economy worsens. Ultimately, however, the West needs to slash its carbon emissions — as does China. And in order to get results, the two sides need to work together closely, even as geopolitical tensions increase.
But these are not the only issues the Queen’s Gambit must address.
Like many other countries, Italy needs to slash its commercial links with Russia and reduce its dependence on China too. Meloni has already decided that Italy will leave China’s Belt and Road Initiative, and since the beginning of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the country has managed to more than halve its Russian gas imports. The new electricity connector that’s being built between Tunisia and Sicily represents the flipside of this strategy — a new focus on expanded and multilayered collaboration with countries in Italy’s neighborhood.
This EU-financed connector will create jobs in Tunisia, help Italy reduce its dependence on Russian gas, and any surplus will go to Europe. And in the meantime, Meloni — joined by Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte — has also negotiated a migration agreement with Tunisia, which was signed by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in July.
The Italian prime minister is, in fact, trying to create the kind of mutually beneficial relationship that has so often eluded European and African countries. That they would benefit from teaming up on climate change and better commercial links is clear — and Meloni believes Italy can also help make the case for Ukraine with some African leaders who might be best suited to propose ways out of the war.
“Italy is trying to engage not just with Ukraine’s traditional supporters but with other countries that are willing to propose solutions as well,” Taló said. “After all, any country can be assaulted by its neighbor, so every country should be able to understand Ukraine’s situation.”
In the Italian parliament, Meloni herself has dramatically dressed down legislators who have suggested supporting Ukraine is futile. That’s a world away from March 2020, when a COVID-stricken Italy asked its EU friends for help but received sluggish answers. Instead, the country had to turn to Russia and China, which made a big show of their rather limited assistance.
Greco helped the Queen’s Gambit become one of chess’s favorite opening moves, one that’s still used by grand masters today. It doesn’t always succeed, but it’s always worth trying because its rewards are considerable. There’s no guarantee that a Queen’s Gambit will work on the foreign policy stage either — but with so many crises and challenges pressing at the same time, trying to tackle them one by one is futile.
A week after a massive wall of water ripped through the Libyan coastal city of Derna sending thousands to their deaths, the focus has turned to caring for survivors.
Citing the Libyan Red Crescent, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said on Sunday that 10,100 people were still missing in the devastated city.
“These figures are expected to rise in the coming days and weeks as search-and-rescue crews work tirelessly to find survivors,” it said.
Aid is now arriving in the war-plagued North African nation as the world mobilises to help emergency services cope with the aftermath of the deadly flood after two dams burst near Derna last week.
At least 40,000 people have been displaced across northeastern Libya, according to the International Organization for Migration, which cautioned the actual number is likely higher given the difficulty accessing the worst-affected areas.
The dams upstream from Derna failed under the pressure of torrential rains from the hurricane-strength Storm Daniel. The structures were built to protect the port city of 100,000 people after it was hit by significant flooding in the mid-20th century.
Some estimates say over 11,000 people in eastern Libya have died following catastrophic floods this week. Ciarán Donnelly, the senior vice president for crisis response, recovery and development at the International Rescue Committee, joins CBS News to discuss the challenges facing recovery efforts.
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The exact death toll from Libya’s devastating flooding remained unclear Thursday. However, the Libyan Red Crescent aid organization estimated that at least 11,300 people have been killed and more than 10,000 remain unaccounted for.
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With survivors still desperately hoping to find the bodies of lost loved ones in debris-choked towns and cities, the United Nations said most of the thousands of deaths from floods in Libya could have been avoided. Kasim Mahjoub, a civil engineer on the ground in Libya, joined CBS News to discuss why the death toll is so high.
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The number of people killed by the devastating flash flooding in northern Libya remained unclear Thursday, due to the daunting scale of the catastrophe and political chaos that’s left the African nation divided between two governments for years, but it was undoubtedly well into the thousands. With survivors still desperately hoping to find the bodies of lost loved ones in debris-choked towns and cities, the United Nations said most of the thousands of deaths could have been avoided.
With better functioning coordination in the crisis-wracked country, “they could have issued the warnings and the emergency management forces would have been able to carry out the evacuation of the people, and we could have avoided most of the human casualties,” Petteri Taalas, head of the U.N.’s World Meteorological Organization, told reporters.
An area damaged by flash floods is seen in Derna, eastern Libya, Sept. 11, 2023.
AFP/Getty
An enormous surge of water, brought by torrential downpours from Storm Daniel over the weekend, burst two upstream river dams and reduced the city of Derna to an apocalyptic wasteland where entire blocks and untold numbers of people were washed into the Mediterranean Sea.
Hundreds of body bags lined its mud-caked streets Thursday, awaiting mass burials, as traumatized and grieving residents search mangled buildings for the missing and bulldozers worked to clear streets.
Access to Derna remained severely hampered five days after the floods struck, as roads and bridges were destroyed and power and phone lines cut to wide areas.
How many are dead and missing in Libya?
There have been wildly varying figures provided by authorities in Libya, but The Associated Press quoted eastern Libya’s health minister, Othman Abduljaleel, as saying Thursday that more than 3,000 bodies had been buried in Derna alone, while another 2,000 were still being processed. He said most of the dead were buried in mass graves outside the city, while others were transferred to nearby towns and cities.
A damaged vehicle is seen stuck in debris after floods caused by Storm Daniel, in Derna, Libya, Sept. 12, 2023.
Abdullah Mohammed Bonja/Anadolu Agency/Getty
Authorities in the east put the death toll in Derna alone at 5,100 as of Wednesday, but that number was widely expected to keep climbing as the grim search through the flood debris continued, and a spokesman for an ambulance center in eastern Libya told the AP that at least 9,000 people were still missing.
The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said earlier in the week that some 10,000 people were missing.
An official with the U.N.’s World Health Organization in Libya told the AP the number of fatalities could reach 7,000, given how many people were still missing, adding that “the numbers could surprise and shock all of us.”
Speaking to the Al Arabia television network, Derna’s Mayor Abdel-Raham al-Ghaithi said the final death toll could even be as high as 20,000.
Aid starts to arrive, with more help promised
The U.N., United States, European Union and multiple Middle Eastern, North African and European nations have pledged to send rescue teams and aid including food, water tanks, emergency shelters, medical supplies and more body bags.
Among the first aircraft to arrive in Benghazi, a 180 mile drive from Derna, were eight Emirati planes carrying rescue teams, hundreds of tons of relief goods and medical aid.
Teams from Turkey’s State Disaster and Emergency Management Authority (AFAD) join search and rescue operations following devastating floods in Libya, Sept. 13, 2023.
AFAD/ Handout/Anadolu Agency/Getty
The Tripoli-based government has declared a national emergency and deployed aircraft, rescue crews and trucks filled with aid.
The United Nations has pledged $10 million in support.
The need is huge, with at least 30,000 people made homeless in Derna and eastern areas, where other towns and villages were also hit by floods and mudslides, according to U.N. agencies.
Impacts of climate change and conflict combined
Climate experts have linked the scale of the disaster to the impacts of a heating planet, combined with years of chaos and decaying infrastructure in Libya.
“Storm Daniel is yet another lethal reminder of the catastrophic impact that a changing climate can have on our world,” said U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk.
While the floods were caused by hurricane-strength Storm Daniel, the damage was compounded by Libya’s desperately poor infrastructure. The country descended into chaos after longtime dictator Muammar Qaddafi was toppled and then killed in a NATO-backed 2011 uprising.
Libya remains divided between two rival blocs — the U.N.-backed, internationally recognized government in Tripoli, and a separate, rival administration based in the disaster-hit east.
According to one report by a regional news outlet Thursday, citing an official with a Libyan “unity” government that has been recognized by only a handful of other nations, all maintenance on both of the burst dams stopped in 2011, when Libya started descending into the civil war that continues today.
Cars are stuck on a bridge surrounded by floodwater as storm Daniel hits central Greece, in the village of Flamouli, near Trikala, September 7, 2023.
STRINGER/REUTERS
The U.N.’s Turk called on all sides in Libya “to overcome political deadlocks and divisions and to act collectively in ensuring access to relief… This is a time for unity of purpose: all those affected must receive support, without regard for any affiliations.”
In an additional threat, landmines left over from the war may have been shifted by the floods, warned Erik Tollefsen, head of the weapon contamination unit at the International Committee of the Red Cross.
Residents of the devastated Libyan city of Derna desperately searched for missing relatives as rescue workers appealed for more body bags, after a catastrophic flood that killed thousands of people and swept many out to sea.
Swathes of the Mediterranean city were obliterated by a torrent of water unleashed by a powerful storm that swept down a usually dry riverbed on Sunday night, bursting dams above the city. Multistorey buildings collapsed with sleeping families inside.
Spokesperson of the interior ministry Lieutenant Tarek al-Kharraz on Wednesday told the AFP news agency that 3,840 deaths had been recorded in the Mediterranean city so far, including 3,190 who have already been buried. Among them were at least 400 foreigners, mostly from Sudan and Egypt.
Meanwhile, Hichem Abu Chkiouat, minister of civil aviation in the administration that runs eastern Libya, told the Reuters news agency more than 5,300 dead had been counted so far, and said the number was likely to increase significantly and might even double.
Derna Mayor Abdulmenam al-Ghaithi told Saudi-owned Al Arabiya television the estimated number of deaths in the city could reach between 18,000 to 20,000 based on the number of districts destroyed by the flood.
A view shows a damaged car [Esam Omran Al-Fetori/Reuters]
Derna resident Mahmud Abdulkarim told journalist Moutaz Ali in Tripoli that he lost his mother and brother, after failing to evacuate in time from their first floor apartment following the collapse of a dam.
“She refused to leave her place … didn’t imagine the situation would be horrible and told him [Abdulkarim] it was just ordinary rains,” Ali reported, from an event organised for Tripoli’s Derwani community.
According to Abdulkarim, when his mother and brother did decide to finally leave their apartment, they were swept away by the floodwaters once they reached the streets to flee.
Mabrooka Elmesmary, a journalist who managed to leave Derna on Tuesday, describes the city as a “disaster on a massive scale”. “There is no water, no electricity, no petrol,” she told Al Jazeera. “The city is flattened.”
Apartment buildings with families inside have been swept away, she said. “There’s a wave of displacement as people are trying to flee Derna but many are stuck because a lot of the roads are blocked or gone,” Elmesmary said, adding that some families have been taking shelter in schools.
Officials have put the number of missing at 10,000. The UN aid agency OCHA said the figure was at least 5,000.
The beach was littered with clothes, toys, furniture, shoes and other possessions swept out of homes by the torrent.
Streets were covered in deep mud and strewn with uprooted trees and hundreds of wrecked cars, many flipped on their sides or onto their roofs. One car was wedged on the second-floor balcony of a gutted building.
The devastation is clear from high points above Derna, where the densely populated city centre, built along a seasonal riverbed, was now a wide, flat crescent of earth with stretches of muddy water gleaming in the sun. Buildings were swept away.
Rescue efforts
Rescue teams have arrived from Egypt, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey and Qatar, said Derna mayor al-Ghaithi.
“We actually need teams specialised in recovering bodies,” he said. “I fear that the city will be infected with an epidemic due to the large number of bodies under the rubble and in the water.”
Al Jazeera’s Charles Stratford, reporting from Benghazi, said a field hospital was part of Qatar’s contribution to this “seemingly growing international aid effort to Libya”.
“This is one of three Qatari military … cargo planes expected to arrive in Benghazi today,” Stratford said.
Members of Libya’s Red Crescent recovering vehicles from the floods [Handout/Libya Red Crescent via EPA]
The aid also includes “medical equipment, medicine, food, tents”, Stratford said. “All the aid here is going to be taken to Derna as quickly as possible.”
Moreover, Al Jazeera’s Malik Traina, reporting from Tripoli, said there has been an outpouring of support from Libyans themselves from across the country.
“We haven’t seen this type of unity for many years here in the country,” Traina said.
Large government convoys with equipment from western Libya have arrived in the east, he said. Volunteer convoys with assistance are also heading towards the east.
“We’re seeing also now volunteers and people giving whatever they can – water, food, medicine, whatever supplies they can.”
Rescue operations are complicated by deep political fractures in the country of seven million people that has lacked a strong central government and been at war on and off since a NATO-backed uprising that toppled Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.
An internationally recognised Government of National Unity (GNU) is based in Tripoli, in the west, while a parallel administration operates in the east, including Derna.
Criticism of local authorities in eastern Libya, including those in Derna, has emerged with some saying that locals were not informed that they had to evacuate before the torrent of water flowed through the city.
However, al-Ghaithi insisted on Wednesday that residents were informed ahead of the flooding.
‘We undertook all the precautions and informed the … the inhabitants of the areas the disaster could have taken place, we created an emergency room .. the security forces carried out their duty,” he said.
DERNA, Libya (AP) — Search teams combed streets, wrecked buildings and even the sea Wednesday to look for bodies in a coastal Libyan city where the collapse of two dams unleashed a massive flash flood that killed at least 5,100 people.
The Mediterranean city of Derna has struggled to get help after Sunday night’s deluge washed away most access roads. Aid workers who managed to reach the city described devastation in its center, with thousands still missing and tens of thousands left homeless.
“Bodies are everywhere, inside houses, in the streets, at sea. Wherever you go, you find dead men, women, and children,” Emad al-Falah, an aid worker from Benghazi, said over the phone from Derna. “Entire families were lost.”
Mediterranean storm Daniel caused deadly flooding Sunday in many towns of eastern Libya, but the worst-hit was Derna. Two dams in the mountains above the city collapsed, sending floodwaters roaring down the Wadi Derna river and through the city center, sweeping away entire city blocks.
The city of Derna as seen on Tuesday.
As much as a quarter of the city has disappeared, emergency officials said.
Waves rose as high as 7 meters (23 feet), Yann Fridez, head of the delegation of the International Committee of the Red Cross in Libya, told broadcaster France24.
Mohammed Derna, a teacher in the city, said he, his family and neighbors rushed to the roof of their apartment building, stunned at the volume of water rushing by. It reached the second story of many buildings, he said. They watched people below, including women and children being washed away.
“They were screaming, ‘Help, help,’” he said over the phone from a field hospital in Derna. “It was like a Hollywood horror movie.”
Derna lies on a narrow coastal plain, under steep mountains. Only two roads from the south remain usable, and they involve a long, winding route through the mountains.
Collapsed bridges over the river split the city center, further hampering movement.
Search teams went through shattered apartment buildings and retrieved the dead floating offshore in the Mediterranean Sea, al-Falah said.
Ossama Ali, a spokesman for an ambulance center in eastern Libya, said at least 5,100 deaths were recorded in Derna, along with around 100 others elsewhere in eastern Libya. More than 7,000 people in the city were injured.
Turkish rescuers participate in the search on Thursday.
Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
A spokesman for the eastern Libyan interior ministry put the death tally in Derna at more than 5,300, according to the state-run news agency.
The number of deaths was likely to increase since teams are still collecting bodies, Ali said. At least 9,000 people are missing, but that number could drop as communications are restored.
At least 30,000 people in Derna were displaced by the flooding, the U.N.’s International Organization for Migration said.
The storm hit other areas in eastern Libya, including the towns of Bayda, Susa and Marj. Rescuers retrieved at least 150 bodies Wednesday from the sea off Bayda, bringing the death tally in the town to about 200, Ali said.
Ahmed Abdalla, a survivor who joined the search-and-rescue effort, said they were putting bodies in the yard of a hospital before taking them for burial in mass graves at Derna’s sole intact cemetery.
“The situation is indescribable. Entire families dead in this disaster. Some were washed away to the sea,” Abdalla said by phone.
Members of Libyan Red Crescent Ajdabiya work in an area affected by flooding.
LIBYAN RED CRESCENT AJDABIYA via Reuters
Derna is 250 kilometers (150 miles) east of Benghazi, where international aid started to arrive on Tuesday.
Neighboring Egypt, Algeria and Tunisia, as well as Turkey, Italy and the United Arab Emirates, sent rescue teams and aid. The U.K. and German governments sent assistance too, including blankets, sleeping bags, sleeping mats, tents, water filters and generators.
U.S. President Joe Biden also said the United States would send money to relief organizations and coordinate with Libyan authorities and the United Nations to provide additional support.
Authorities transferred hundreds of bodies to morgues in nearby towns. More than 300, including 84 Egyptians, were brought to the morgue in the city of Tobruk, 169 kilometers (105 miles) east of Derna, the local Medical Center reported.
The victims’ lists reflected how Libya, despite its turmoil, was always a magnet for workers from around the region because of its oil industry.
More than 70 of Derna’s dead hailed from a single southern Egyptian village, el-Sharif. On Wednesday morning, hundreds attended a mass funeral in the village for 64 people.
A view of the flooded city of Derna on Wednesday.
Rabei Hanafy said his extended family lost 16 men in the flooding, 12 of whom were buried Wednesday. Another funeral for four others was held in a town in the northern Nile Delta.
Among those killed in Libya was the family of Saleh Sariyeh, a Palestinian originally from the Ein el-Hilweh refugee camp in Lebanon who had lived in Derna for decades. The 62-year-old, his wife and two daughters were all killed when their home in Derna was washed away, his nephew Mohammed Sariyeh said.
The four were buried in Derna. Because of ongoing gunbattles in Ein el-Hilweh, the family there could not hold a gathering to receive condolences from friends and neighbors, Mohammed said.
Derna, about 900 kilometers (560 miles) east of the capital, Tripoli, is controlled by the forces of powerful military commander Khalifa Hifter, who is allied with the eastern Libyan government. The rival government in western Libya, based in Tripoli, is allied with other armed groups.
Derna was once a hub for extremist groups in the years of chaos that followed the NATO-backed uprising that toppled and killed longtime dictator Moammar Gadhafi in 2011.
Magdy reported from Cairo. Associated Press Writer Bassem Mroue in Beirut contributed to this report.
