Rescuers discover another 300 bodies of flood victims in Libya UPDATED

Rescuers have discovered at least 300 more bodies of those killed in floods around the city of Tobruk.

As reported by the Al-Marsad portal, all the bodies were taken to the city medical centre for examination. Additional details have not yet been provided.

15:57

About a quarter of Libya's eastern city of Derna was wiped out after dams burst in a storm, the administration in the area said on September 12, and the Red Cross said 10,000 people were feared to be missing across the country in floods.

At least 1,000 bodies had already been recovered in the city of Derna alone, and officials expected the death toll would be much higher, after Storm Daniel barrelled across the Mediterranean into a country crumbling from more than a decade of conflict, Reuters reports.

A Reuters journalist on the way to Derna, a coastal city of around 125,000 inhabitants, saw vehicles overturned on the edges of roads, trees knocked down, and abandoned, flooded houses.

"I returned from Derna. It is very disastrous. Bodies are lying everywhere - in the sea, in the valleys, under the buildings," Hichem Abu Chkiouat, minister of civil aviation and member of the emergency committee in the administration that controls the east, told Reuters by phone.

"The number of bodies recovered in Derna is more 1,000," he said. "I am not exaggerating when I say that 25% of the city has disappeared. Many, many buildings have collapsed."

Abu Chkiouat later told Al Jazeera that he expected the total number of dead across the country to reach more than 2,500, as the number of missing people was rising.

"We can confirm from our independent sources of information that the number of missing people is hitting 10,000 so far," Tamer Ramadan, the head of a delegation of the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), told reporters in Geneva via video link from Tunisia.

Videos showed a wide torrent running through Derna's city centre after dams burst. Ruined buildings stood on either side.

Another video shared on Facebook, which Reuters could not independently verify, appeared to show dozens of bodies covered in blankets on the pavements.

Convoys of aid and assistance were heading towards the city.

Libya is politically divided between East and West and public services have crumbled since a 2011 NATO-backed uprising that prompted years of conflict.

The internationally recognised government in Tripoli does not control eastern areas but has dispatched aid to Derna, with at least one relief flight leaving from the western city of Misrata on Tuesday, a Reuters journalist on the plane said.

Other countries, including the United States, also said they would help.

13:09

The death toll from heavy rains and flooding that hit north-eastern Libya has reached 3,000.

The number of those missing in the floods climbed to 7,000.

"So far, the number of victims of the disaster in the country has reached 3 thousand and the missing are counted in thousands," the Libyan Health Ministry's statement says.

On September 11, Libya's top authority urged friendly countries and international aid groups to provide aid to the flood-stricken areas in the eastern region.

"We are certain that international solidarity will have a positive effect in rebuilding the area and its recovery from such a natural disaster," said a statement by the Libyan Presidential Council, Anadolu reports.

It also urged the Libyan citizens to abide by "the safety instructions and warnings" issued by relevant authorities to overcome the deadly crisis.

The authorities based in eastern Libya estimated that hundreds were killed and thousands of others went missing after the floods hit the region.

The Libyan News Agency (LANA) cited Ossama Hamad, the head of the parliament-appointed government, as saying in an interview that more than 2,000 people were killed in the eastern city of Derna, adding that entire residential blocks were erased after they were swept away by the floods.

Early on Monday, the head of Libya’s Tripoli-based unity government, Abdul Hamid Dbeibeh, declared all areas exposed to the storm and floods as “disaster zones.”

Dbeibeh also announced three days of national mourning for the victims of deadly floods that ravaged the North African country.

Storm Daniel swept several areas in eastern Libya on Sunday, most notably the cities of Benghazi, Bayda, and Al Marj, as well as Soussa and Derna, according to an Anadolu reporter in the field.