Emergency teams are working to find survivors and retrieve bodies after a massive flood hit Libya’s northeast three days ago, killing at least 11,000 people and leaving 10,000 missing.
Eyewitness footage shared on social media showed the devastation after the floods, with collapsed rooftops and tumbled cars amid the rubble of destroyed infrastructure.
Satellite images showed buildings in the worst-hit city of Derna destroyed by water and sand. The coastal city’s shores appeared to have been severely eroded.
At least 11,300 people are dead in Derna, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said Saturday, revising an earlier estimate, and about 170 people had been killed outside Derna. In Derna alone, at least 10,100 people are missing, the UN report explained.
Local rescue teams continue to search for the missing, according to state media. More than 30,000 people have been displaced, the United Nations’ International Organization for Migration (IOM) in Libya said on Wednesday.
Relatives of those still missing told CNN they are terrified. Others who learned of their families’ tragic fate are devastated.
One resident of Tobruk, a city to the east, told CNN that eight of his relatives died in the flooding in Derna.
“My wife Areej’s sister and her husband both passed away. His whole family is also dead. A total of eight people are all gone,” Emad Milad told CNN. “It’s a disaster. We are praying for better things,” Milad said.
Libya has been riven by political turmoil since civil war erupted in 2014, and now has two rival governments, the eastern parliament-backed government in Benghazi and the internationally recognized government in Tripoli.
India’s economy will become carbon neutral by the year 2070, the country’s prime minster has announced at the COP26 climate crisis summit in Glasgow. The target date is two decades beyond what scientists say is needed to avert catastrophic climate impacts. India is the last of the world’s major carbon polluters to announce a net-zero target, with China saying it would reach that goal in 2060, and the United States and the European Union aiming for 2050.
China's carbon emissions are vast and growing, dwarfing those of other countries. Experts agree that without big reductions in China's emissions, the world cannot win the fight against climate change. In 2020, China's President Xi Jinping said his country would aim for its emissions to reach their highest point before 2030 and for carbon neutrality before 2060. His statement has now been confirmed as China's official position ahead of the COP26 global climate summit in Glasgow. But China has not said exactly how these goals will be achieved.
China's carbon emissions are vast and growing, dwarfing those of other countries. Experts agree that without big reductions in China's emissions, the world cannot win the fight against climate change. In 2020, China's President Xi Jinping said his country would aim for its emissions to reach their highest point before 2030 and for carbon neutrality before 2060. His statement has now been confirmed as China's official position ahead of the COP26 global climate summit in Glasgow. But China has not said exactly how these goals will be achieved.
A crucial U.N. conference heard calls on its first day for the world's major economies to keep their promises of financial help to address the climate crisis, while big polluters India and Brazil made new commitments to cut emissions. World leaders, environmental experts and activists all pleaded for decisive action to halt the global warming which threatens the future of the planet at the start of the two-week COP26 summit in the Scottish city of Glasgow on Monday. The task facing negotiators was made even more daunting by the failure of the Group of 20 major industrial nations to agree ambitious new commitments at the weekend.