Libya floods: death toll set to rise with 10,000 reported missing

The death toll from two catastrophic dam collapses in eastern Libya has risen to 6,000, a unity government official has said, as rescue workers continue to recover hundreds of bodies from the coastal city of Derna.

At least 10,000 people are missing, the Red Cross confirmed, following flooding that struck Derna over the weekend after the two dams collapsed. Local officials have said that many of those yet to be found are unlikely to be alive.

The damage was caused by a "raging torrent of mud-brown water", The Guardian reported, which "swept away several major bridges" causing many of the city's multi-storey buildings to collapse.

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Entire neighbourhoods have been washed away, with many bodies swept out to sea, Tariq al-Kharraz, a representative of Libya's eastern government, said. Waves at Derna are "constantly dumping dozens of bodies", said Hichem Abu Chkiouat, the minister of civil aviation in the administration that runs eastern Libya.

Chkiouat appealed for international assistance, adding that Libya does not have the facility or experience to deal with a disaster of this scale.

Recovery efforts are "likely to be complicated by the weakness of the state", said the Financial Times. Libya has been "blighted by years of chaos and conflict" since dictator Muammar Gaddafi was toppled in October 2011. "Rival factions have since carved the country into a patchwork of fiefdoms," the paper said, complicating its ability to respond to the catastrophe.

The dams upstream from storm-hit Derna "had not been maintained for more than two decades", said Al Jazeera. And according to the city's deputy mayor, Ahmed Madroud, the infrastructure was not built to withstand such devastating floods.

"The dams have not been maintained since 2002, and they are not big", Ahmed Madroud told the broadcaster. According to Madroud, the first dam that failed was 70 metres (230 feet) tall. But once it burst, water rushed through and began building up behind the second dam which eventually collapsed as well.

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said emergency response teams have now been mobilised to help on the ground as the search and rescue effort continues.