As part of his investigation into the recent flood calamity that claimed thousands of lives, Libya’s prosecutor general ordered the arrest of eight officials on Monday, according to his office.
On September 10, a hurricane-force storm hit the area of Derna, a port city in eastern Libya, causing a flash flood that witnesses compared to a tsunami.
According to a statement from the prosecutor general’s office, the officials are accused of “bad management” and negligence. The statement also said that they currently work in or have previously worked for agencies in charge of managing water resources and dams.
The official death toll reached 3,800 on Saturday, and according to foreign assistance organizations, 10,000 people or more may still be missing.
After opening a probe, Libya’s prosecutor general Al-Seddik al-Sur said more than a week ago that the two dams upstream from Derna dad been cracked since 1998.
But repairs begun by a Turkish company in 2010 were suspended after a few months when Libya’s 2011 revolution flared, and the work never resumed, the prosecutor said on September 16, vowing to deal firmly with those responsible.
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According to a statement from the prosecutor general’s office, the officials are accused of “bad management” and negligence. The statement also said that they currently work in or have previously worked for agencies in charge of managing water resources and dams.
The official death toll reached 3,800 on Saturday, and according to foreign assistance organizations, 10,000 people or more may still be missing.
The first dam to collapse in the disaster was the Abu Mansur dam, 13 kilometres (eight miles) from Derna, whose reservoir held 22.5 million cubic metres (nearly 800 million cubic feet) of water.
The second dam, Al Bilad, which had a capacity of 1.5 million cubic meters and was only a kilometer away from the coastal city, was then breached by the flood.
The normally dry wadi or riverbed that runs through the center of the city was wiped clean by the wall of water and debris.
According to Sour, these dams were built by a Yugoslav corporation in the 1970s, “not to collect water but to protect Derna from floods.”
Since Libya’s 2011 revolution, a budget has been allocated every year to repair the two dams, but none of the successive governments has undertaken the work, according to an official.
In a 2021 report from the Libyan audit bureau, officials criticised “procrastination” on resuming repair work at the two dams.
In November 2022, engineer and academic Abdel Wanis Ashour warned in a study that a “catastrophe” threatened Derna if the authorities did not carry out maintenance on the dams.
AFP
