Libya's chief prosecutor said Monday he ordered the detention of eight current and former officials pending his investigation into the collapse of two dams earlier this month, a disaster that sent a wall of water several meters high through the center of a coastal city and left thousands of people dead.
The two dams outside the city of Derna broke up on Sep. 11 after they were overwhelmed by Storm Daniel, which caused heavy rain across eastern Libya. The failure of the structures inundated as much as a quarter of the city, officials have said, destroying entire neighbourhoods and sweeping people out to sea.Government officials and aid agencies have given estimated death tolls ranging from more than 4,000 to over 11,000.
A report by a state-run audit agency in 2021 said the two dams hadn't been maintained despite the allocation of more than $2 million for that purpose in 2012 and 2013. The floods have left as many as a third of Derna's housing and infrastructure damaged, according to the U.N.'s Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, or OCHA. Authorities have evacuated the most impacted part of the city, leaving only search and ambulance teams, OCHA said.
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