Yesterday Ahmed al-Masmari, spokesperson for Khalifa Haftar's Libyan National Army, which controls eastern Libya, spoke to our colleagues at BBC Arabic about the two dams which burst in Derna and swept away homes.

"The situation is so bad," he says. "What happened exceeded all expectations… We don’t know for certain whether regular maintenance of the dams has been carried out."

Masmari goes on to say that even if the dams were modern or well maintained, they wouldn't have been capable of dealing with that amount of rain anyway.

But Masmari says he doesn't want to blame anyone: "Even if all measures had been taken, there would have been losses, massive losses."

BBC Focus on Africa

Image source, Reuters

Libya faces unprecedented tragedy as the aftermath of Storm Daniel continues to unfold.

Victims of floods that have devastated parts of eastern Libya are being buried in mass graves as the work of recovering bodies continues.

Abdulkader Assad is a journalist for the Libya Observer and he told BBC's Focus on Africa that volunteers and rescuers lost their lives while trying to save others in Derna.

"There are volunteers that died and people that got injured when they were trying to rescue people or look for any survivors," he said.

He also spoke of the slow aid response time and how it was impacted by the ongoing political divisions in Libya.

"It's sad to say the political divisions are a slowing factor to the response. At the beginning of the crisis there was no coordination between East and West governments... When the storm hit, every government wanted to show they were the legitimate one taking action and asking for help, this confused the international community - and this made the response a bit sluggish," he added.

Listen to the full interview here.

Some countries are sending aid to assist Libya in the aftermath of the flooding.

The humanitarian aid organisation Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) says although it does not currently work in the areas affected by the floods in Libya an "emergency team will arrive in Derna tomorrow".

In the post , externalon X, formerly know as Twitter, MSF says the team will "assess medical needs and donate emergency medical kits to care for the wounded and body bags to the Libyan Red Crescent".

Eyewitness footage taken earlier this week showed a torrent of water tearing through Derna, causing massive destruction.

Two dams were breached and four bridges collapsed when a strong storm hit the north-eastern coast of Libya.

Large parts of the eastern port city of Derna, which has about 100,000 residents, were destroyed.

Image source, AFP

The destruction wrought by Storm Daniel on Derna has meant the port city is effectively only accessible by sea.

It is built either side of a river valley, surrounded by hills.

“It is wedged at the base of the mountain, facing the sea - so you can only access it by two main roads,” Libyan doctor Hani Shennib, who lives in the US but has family in Derna, told the BBC.

The river is usually dry - but the raging torrent released as a result of the two dams that burst during the storm has destroyed several bridges and made roads impassable in places.

Derna gets very little rain in September - in fact it looks like as much rain fell in 24 hours as usually does in a whole year.

By road, most aid would either be coming from Libya’s second-biggest city, Benghazi - which is a drive of around 300km (190 miles) to the west of Derna, or from Tobruk - around 300km to the east.

With other parts of the region also hit by floods - these journeys will be arduous - and given that several areas of Derna have been dragged into the sea, navigating around the port is also likely to be difficult.

Image source, Reuters

The situation in Libya's flood-hit areas is like "a bombardment and an earthquake happening at the same time”, says Tommaso Della Longa, from the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.

He tells the BBC three of their volunteers have died while trying to save lives in Libya.

Search and rescue efforts continue, but Della Longa says the window for this will begin to close in the coming hours.

With entire parts of Derna destroyed, he says there is a need for “everything”, from body bags to water.

He says the “good news” is that the Turkish Red Crescent has arrived with medical equipment, as well as the Egyptian teams.

The International Committee of the Red Cross has launched an appeal for $10m (£8m) to help those affected in Libya over the next two months.

Libya is suffering from flooding across the country, severely affecting local infrastructure.

More than 5,300 people died after floods burst two dams in the eastern city of Derna and swept away homes.

Al Bayda is a city to the west of Derna. In this video we see staff battle to clear the deluge of floodwater that has swamped the hospital.

Former Libyan Foreign Minister Mohammed al-Dairi tells the BBC he was “appalled” by what he called a lack of co-ordination between the country's two governments.

“It’s a pathetic state of affairs and this is due to the idiotic situation - we should call a spade a spade, I think this is due to the foolishness of those on the forefront of our public affairs,” he says.

“I think the two governments are not speaking to each other - we badly need something co-ordinated so that calls for international aid are carried out."

Dairi says he lost more than 10 people from his wife’s family in the Derna floods.

Yesterday he called for a joint emergency rule and said that while there had been a “great deal of solidarity” between civilians, there was also “anger” because of the “lack of preparedness and slow response”.

“It’s time we put aside the political divide and tackle this catastrophic situation,” he says.

Image source, Reuters

After the floods burst two dams in Derna, the water swept away homes, overturned cars and killed more than 5,300 people.

This image taken by Planet Labs Pbc shows the level of destruction in the area.

Swathes of the city were obliterated by the flood waters. This happened after rains from a powerful storm burst dams on Sunday night.

This resulted in multi-story buildings being swept away with sleeping families inside.

The Wadi Derna river, which runs from the mountains, through the city and into the Mediterranean, is dry for much of the year but the heavy rain overwhelmed two dams and destroyed several bridges.

Experts who have spoken to BBC Verify say it's too early to know whether the extreme rainfall was simply too much for the dams to handle or whether the condition of the structures also played a role.

It appears that the upper dam failed first, according to the experts.

The water was brought by Storm Daniel - a Mediterranean hurricane-like system known as a medicane that had already caused extensive flooding in Greece - which reached Libya on Sunday, and you can see its path in the images below.

You can read more here.

Ece Göksedef
Live reporter

Image source, Reuters

The eastern coastal city of Derna has been hit worst by the floods - and it was one of the most affected by Libya's civil war, after Col Muammar Gaddafi was overthrown in 2011.

While different armed groups were fighting against each other, along with weak border controls and weak public security bodies, the Islamic State (IS) group started to gain strength in Derna in 2012.

In October 2014, a vast majority of the city was under control of IS, and it was the focus of bomb attacks by the international coalition.

In 2015, a coalition of armed groups called the Shura Council, backed by the Libyan Army in Tripoli, started fighting IS.

But there were to be three groups fighting for the city for almost a year, as powerful commander Khalifa Haftar started his military operation to take over Derna.

The Shura Council gained control of the city in late 2015. But it was besieged by Haftar's forces for more than two years, being the only city in the east which was not controlled by Haftar.

After a war between 2018-2019, Haftar claimed Derna.

Years of fighting has led to huge levels of damage, especially on residential buildings and health facilities. Today, a large majority of displaced Libyans come from Derna.

Libyan doctor Najib Tarhoni has been working in a hospital near Derna and earlier he spoke to Radio 4's World at One.

"People who are missing are probably under the ruins or drowning... we need logistic help," he says.

Listen to him in this 46-second clip:

Libyan Red Crescent volunteers have been hard at work in the east of the country, where mud is one of many things hampering rescue efforts.

Take a look at some of the photos we've been getting:

Image source, Libyan Red Crescent/Reuters

Image source, Libyan Red Crescent/Reuters

It is not clear where the two photos below were taken, but you can see how bodies are being recovered from gullies caused by the flood waters.

Image source, Libyan Red Crescent/Reuters

Image source, Libyan Red Crescent/Reuters

This shows the scale of the task facing Red Crescent workers in the coastal city of Derna, which was in the path of racing floodwaters from the burst dams.

Image source, Libyan Red Crescent/Reuters

Image source, Libyan Red Crescent/Reuters

Image source, AFP

Libya has reopened four oil ports in the east of the country, which had been shut since Saturday as a precautionary while Storm Daniel swept across the Mediterranean towards the North African coast.

Brega, Es Sidra, Ras Lanuf and Zueitina have now all restarted, Al Omran International Maritime Agencies says.

Libya's oil sector is central to the economy, but it has been repeatedly disrupted by violence since long-time ruler Muammar Gaddafi was ousted in 2011.

Two months ago, rival politicians agreed to form a committee to oversee the sharing of oil revenues.

Libya's continued political division has complicated the country's response to these floods.

If you're a bit rusty on the broader situation in the country, don't worry, let's get you up to speed.

The oil-rich North African country has been divided into competing factions ever since the overthrow of long-term leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi. Colonel Gaddafi had ruled autocratically for four decades until he was toppled and killed in a 2011 rebellion assisted by Western military intervention.

In 2014, renewed fighting broke out, with Libya split between two administrations - one based in the east, and one in the west in the capital Tripoli. The two sides signed a ceasefire in 2020 but political rivalries continue.

In 2021, a Government of National Unity was formed in Tripoli with Abdul Hamid Dbeibeh as the internationally-recognised prime minister, but the following year the eastern-based parliament formed a rival - and rather similarly named - Government of National Stability.

The continued polarisation of Libya between these two governments claiming to be the country's legitimate rulers has, as you can imagine, complicated international peace efforts.

• You can find our country profile of Libya here

Image source, Reuters

We have been hearing this morning from local minister Hishem Abu Chkiouat, minister for civil aviation in the east Libyan authority.

He has just returned from Derna and spoke to the BBC.

"The devastation is so deep some areas have been vanished, completely disappeared," he says.

"So imagine a residential area has been destroyed completely, you cannot see it, it's not existing anymore.

"I've never seen anything like this before. It's by all means a tsunami."

Shaun Da Costa
BBC Newsbeat

Libyans abroad are anxious to help with the aid effort, including 29-year-old Mohammed Bashein, who lives in the UK city of Birmingham.

“For us being away, it can be a bit hard. Not knowing what exactly is happening,” he tells BBC Newsbeat, adding that his family are safe back home.

He is now working other Libyans in a charity to collect donations to send to local aid workers on the ground.

“It's not very easy to send money into Libya, but we want to serve as that bridge.”

Image source, Getty Images

A doctor from Libya's eastern city of Benghazi has reached Derna to help and says he and his colleagues are overwhelmed by what they have found.

“We see the huge number of corpses all over the area. It is a disaster completely. I'm shocked, really,” Dr Anas told the BBC’s Today programme.

People in the port city were so traumatised that they were unable to cry, he said.

Many bodies are being laid out in the streets so that relatives can identify loved ones, before being buried in graves dug by a mechanical excavator.

The medic said whole areas had disappeared, buildings had been swept out to sea and others were now buried under mud.

The European Union says assistance from Germany, Romania and Finland is on its way to Libya.

The United Nations has pledged $10 million, and several other countries have offered aid, among them Algeria, Turkey, Italy, Qatar, Egypt, the UAE and Tunisia.

France is sending a field hospital able to treat 500 people a day.

The prime minister of Libya's internationally recognised government in the capital Tripoli earlier said foreign aid would only be accepted where "necessary".

Italy and Jordan are also sending relief to the areas impacted.

Gem O'Reilly
Live reporter

Ahmed Bayram from the Norwegian Refugee Council's response team in Libya spoke to me earlier today.