DERNA, Libya: A year since two dams burst upstream from the eastern Libyan city of Derna, unleashing a wall of water that swept away thousands of people, its residents no longer hold out hope of finding many of their loved ones.
For Libya, the disaster on the night of Sept. 10 was unprecedented as torrential rains from Mediterranean storm Daniel gushed down steep mountainsides. Those who survived in the coastal city recount nightmarish scenes, with bodies piling up quicker than authorities could count them.
Mohsen Al-Sheikh, a 52-year-old actor and theater administrator, lost 103 of his extended family — only four bodies of his relatives were recovered.
Scores of other families were also nearly wiped out, with only a few surviving members, Al-Sheikh says. “Those who were found were found, and those who weren’t, weren’t.”
Now, the townspeople and city officials are trying to rebuild even though they will never bury those who disappeared forever.
Deadly flooding in Derna’s riverbed valley
Residents of Derna woke up to the loud explosions of the two dams breaking. What followed was a living nightmare.
The surging waters, two stories high, wiped out entire neighborhoods, roads, bridges and residential buildings across the port city. Thousands of people were instantly washed away, drowning within minutes, and tens of thousands more were displaced.
Estimates from aid organizations put the number of deaths between 4,000 and 11,000, and the number of missing people between 9,000 and 10,000. Another 30,000 were displaced.
Houses in the Al-Maghar neighborhood, where Al-Sheikh lives, were built on a hillside of a dry riverbed valley, where the water rushed into. The slope meant many houses had a lower and upper entrance on opposite sides — a design that Al-Maghar had come up with many years earlier. Some fleeing families used the back doors to escape to higher ground.
Al-Maghar’s design may have saved hundreds during the flooding, although it wasn’t built to serve an emergency purpose. That night, many also fled by running into their neighbors’ homes and up the hill, through the higher-level doors.
Derna residents ended up calling them “the doors of safety.”
That night, Shaker Alhusni left his own home to help a neighbor, only to return and find his house full of water. His family was able to flee to higher floors.
A report published not long after the disaster found that the torrential rains were 50 times more likely to occur and 50 percent more intense because of human-caused climate change. The analysis was conducted by the World Weather Attribution group, which aims to quickly evaluate the possible role of climate change in extreme weather events.
In late July, Libya’s criminal court sentenced 12 local officials responsible for managing the country’s dam facilities for negligence in the dams’ maintenance. Sentences ranged between nine to 29 years in prison, according to Libya’s Attorney General’s Office. ٍ
Rebuilding amid political uncertainty
The oil-rich Libya has been in chaos since 2011, when an Arab Spring uprising, backed by NATO, ousted longtime dictator Muammar Qaddafi, who was later killed.
Derna, with its diverse mix of residents of Turkish, Andalusian and Cretan origin, was for years a cultural center of the North African country. But it was also deeply affected by Libya’s civil war and more than a decade of unrest. For several years after the 2011 uprising, it fell under the influence of the Daesh group and other extremists.
Now, one of Libya’s rival authorities is putting serious resources into rebuilding Derna — the east-based government and the forces of Gen. Khalifa Haftar and his self-styled Libyan National Army. A rival administration is based in the capital of Tripoli, to the west, and enjoys the support of most of the international community.
Last September, the east-based Libyan parliament agreed to allocate 10 billion Libyan dinars (around $2 billion) to launch a development fund that would help rebuild Derna and impacted areas around the city.
A city committee for maintenance and reconstruction began building new homes and provided financial compensation for the survivors, including Al-Sheikh.
Across Derna’s riverbed, widened by the floodwaters, Al-Sahaba Bridge is being rebuilt along with Al-Sahaba Mosque next door.
There are plans to build 280 apartments for those who lost their homes, according to Salem Al-Sheikh, an engineer at the construction site that’s part of a residential project launched in May. Al-Sheikh told The Associated Press that 60 percent of reconstruction works across Derna has been completed.
More support for the survivors
International observers say that the country needs much more support to help the coastal city get back to a semblance of the life it once had.
“There remains a critical need for coordinated, effective and efficient reconstruction and long-term development,” said Stephanie Koury, head of the UN’s mission to Libya, or UNSMIL, said in a statement marking the first anniversary of Derna’s disaster.
In July, Liz Throssell, spokesperson for the UN Human Rights Office, said reconstruction efforts and helping authorities identify human remains are crucial.
“We reiterate the calls of affected communities for coordinated, transparent, and national efforts for reconstruction,” she said. “It is crucial to provide assistance ... in the identification of human remains and the dignified reburial of the bodies.”
Plans to rebuild the dams were being discussed last year, but it remains unconfirmed whether those plans will move forward.
That leaves Al-Sheikh uncertain whether he’ll be able to return to his house or will it be completely demolished like others that remain along the Derna Valley to avoid another similar tragedy in the future.
A Libyan city scarred by disaster tries to rebuild a year after deadly flooding
https://arab.news/2ssdn
A Libyan city scarred by disaster tries to rebuild a year after deadly flooding
- For Libya, the disaster on the night of Sept. 10 was unprecedented as torrential rains from Mediterranean storm Daniel gushed down steep mountainsides
- Those who survived in the coastal city recount nightmarish scenes, with bodies piling up quicker than authorities could count them
Jailed PKK leader Ocalan says armed struggle with Turkiye over
In the recording, dated June and released by Firat News Agency, which is close to the PKK, Ocalan urged Turkiye’s parliament to set up a commission to oversee disarmament and manage a broader peace process.
The PKK, which has waged an insurgency against the Turkish state for 40 years and is labelled a terrorist organization by Turkiye, the United States and the EU, decided in May to disband after an initial written appeal from Ocalan in February.
“The phase of armed struggle has ended. This is not a loss, but a historic gain,” he said in the video, the first time since he was jailed in 1999 that either footage of him or a recording of his voice has been released.
“The armed struggle stage must now be voluntarily replaced by a phase of democratic politics and law.”
Ocalan, seated in a beige polo shirt with a glass of water on the table in front of him, appeared to read from a transcript in the seven-minute video. He was surrounded by six other jailed PKK members all looking straight at the camera.
He said the PKK had ended its separatist agenda.
“The main objective has been achieved – existence has been acknowledged,” he said. “What remains would be excessive repetition and a dead end.”
Ocalan added that Turkiye’s pro-Kurdish DEM Party, the third largest in parliament in Ankara, should work alongside other political parties.
South Sudan says US deportees under government care
- The South Sudanese foreign ministry released a statement on the migrants saying: “They are currently in Juba under the care of the relevant authorities, who are screening them and ensuring their safety and well-being”
JUBA: War-torn South Sudan has said it is looking after a group of eight criminal migrants controversially deported from the United States.
Only one of them is from South Sudan. The administration of US President Donald Trump is trying to move unwanted migrants to third countries as some nations refuse to accept returnees.
The rest comprise two people from Myanmar, two from Cuba, and one each from Vietnam, Laos and Mexico.
The decision has been fought in American courts.
“They are currently in Juba under the care of the relevant authorities, who are screening them and ensuring their safety and well-being,” the South Sudanese foreign ministry statement said late Tuesday.
It did not give details, but said the “careful and well-studied decision” was part of “ongoing bilateral engagement.”
“South Sudan responded positively to a request from the US authorities as a gesture of goodwill, humanitarian cooperation, and commitment to mutual interests,” it added.
United Nations experts, appointed by the UN Human Rights Council but who do not speak on behalf of the UN, have criticized the move.
“International law is clear that no one shall be sent anywhere where there are substantial grounds for believing that the person would be in danger of being subjected to ... torture, enforced disappearance or arbitrary deprivation of life,” 11 independent UN rights experts said in a statement.
The deportees left the United States for South Sudan in May but their flight ended up in Djibouti when a US district court imposed a stay on third-country deportations. That ruling was overturned by the Supreme Court earlier this month.
The group arrived in South Sudan on June 5 with an official, speaking on condition of anonymity, saying they had been returned by US Marines.
Foreign ministry spokesperson Apuk Ayuel Mayen said Juba maintains a strong commitment to its people, including “its nationals returning under any circumstances” and “persons with recognized links to South Sudan.”
Simmering rivalry between South Sudanese President Salva Kiir and his vice president Riek Machar boiled over into open hostilities in March.
The tensions have raised fears of a return to full-scale war in the world’s youngest country, where a civil war killed some 400,000 people in 2013-2018.
Ghost camp: Israeli operations in West Bank push wave of Palestinians from their homes
- Israeli operations are pushing tens of thousands of West Bank Palestinians out of their homes
- Around 40,000 residents from the Tulkarm, Nur Shams and Jenin refugee camps have been displaced by the military operation this year
TULKARM: Malik Lutfi contemplated which of his family’s belongings to salvage in the few moments he was given while Israeli troops carried out home demolitions in the Tulkarm refugee camp where he grew up in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
Now 51, the father of six has rented a small room in the nearby city of Tulkarm, but without access to his electronic repair shop in the cordoned-off camp, he has no income to meet the rent, sparking anxiety about his family’s future.
With bulldozers roaring outside, he said: “They kicked us out six months ago and we are still out. When you go back you try to bring anything you can, but in two hours with only our hands, you cannot bring many things.”
He said he knew many families in a worse situation even than his, pushed to living in crowded schools or on patches of farmland.
“We are waiting for help,” he said.
Israeli operations are pushing tens of thousands of West Bank Palestinians like Lutfi out of their homes, says B’Tselem, the independent Israeli human rights information center for the occupied territories.
Around 40,000 residents from the Tulkarm, Nur Shams and Jenin refugee camps have been displaced by the military operation this year, B’Tselem said.
Israel says it is acting against flashpoints of militancy, including the northern cities of Tulkarm and Jenin.
“This requires the demolition of buildings, allowing the forces to operate freely and move unhindered within the area,” an Israeli military spokesperson said in a statement on Tuesday.
“The decision to demolish these structures is based on operational necessity and was made only after considering alternative options,” the statement said.
Israeli demolitions have drawn widespread international criticism and coincide with heightened fears among Palestinians of an organized effort by Israel to formally annex the West Bank, the area seized by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war.
Reuters witnesses this week saw bulldozers plowing through buildings and wide, new roads lined by rubble that bulldozers had carved out by demolishing concrete homes. Residents piled chairs, blankets and cooking equipment onto trucks.
Tulkarm’s governor Abdullah Kamil said in recent weeks the destruction had intensified, with 106 homes and 104 other buildings in the nearby Tulkarm and Nur Shams camps destroyed.
“What is happening in Tulkarm is an Israeli political decision, the issue has nothing to do with security,” Kamil, the Palestinian governor, said. “There is nothing left in the camp, it has become a ghost camp.”
Israel’s northern West Bank operation which began in January has been one of the biggest since the Second Intifada uprising by Palestinians more than 20 years ago, involving several brigades of troops earlier this year backed by drones, helicopters and, for the first time in decades, heavy battle tanks.
SIMMERING SITUATION
As efforts ramp up in Washington and Qatar to secure a Gaza ceasefire deal, some international officials and rights groups say they are also worried about the simmering situation for Palestinians in the West Bank.
“In the northern West Bank, Israel has begun replicating tactics and combat doctrines honed in its current offensive on Gaza,” said Shai Parnes, public outreach director at B’Tselem.
“This includes increased ... widespread and deliberate destruction of homes and civilian infrastructure, and forced displacement of civilians from areas designated by the military as combat zones.”
Israeli hard-liners inside and outside the government have called repeatedly for Israel to annex the West Bank, a kidney-shaped area around 100 kilometers (62 miles) long that Palestinians see as the core of a future independent state, along with Gaza and with East Jerusalem as its capital.
Israeli government ministers deny that the West Bank operation has any wider purpose than battling militant groups. The Israeli military in its statement said it was following international law and targeting militancy.
Kamil, the Palestinian governor, said displacement was putting pressure on a community already reeling economically, with thousands sheltering in mosques, schools and overcrowded homes with relatives.
Returning for the first time in six months, Lutfi said he was shocked at the scale of damage.
“Most people when they come back to look at their homes, they find them destroyed, the destruction that meets them is enormous: wide streets, destroyed infrastructure and electricity,” he said. “If we want to rebuild, it will take a long time.”
Gaza doctors say Israel’s killing of a prominent colleague leaves a hard-to-fill void
- More than 1,400 Palestinian health workers have been killed in Gaza since the war began in October 2023, according to the United Nations
JERUSALEM: When the onetime director of a Gaza Strip hospital was killed by an Israeli airstrike last week, he joined a growing list of prominent Palestinian doctors who have died during 21 months of war that has devastated the territory’s health system.
The death of Dr. Marwan Al-Sultan, a 49-year-old cardiologist, was described by colleagues as a major blow personally and professionally, leaving another void in Gaza’s medical establishment that will not be easily replaced.
“He was one of two cardiologists, so by losing Dr. Marwan, thousands of people will lose and suffer,” said Mohammed Abu Selmia, a close friend of his for 15 years, and the director of Shifa Hospital, Gaza’s largest medical facility.
A photograph from 2022 shows Abu Selmia, Al-Sultan and 30 other leading doctors and medical experts in Gaza, all faculty smiling after the graduation of medical school students from Islamic University in Gaza City. At least five of those veteran doctors, mentors to the next generation, are now dead – each killed by Israeli airstrikes, except for one who died while in captivity in Israel.
Al-Sultan and three other specialists in the 2022 photo who were killed in airstrikes died during off-duty hours, though it is not clear if these were targeted killings.
When asked why Al-Sultan’s building was attacked last Wednesday, the Israeli military said it had struck a “key terrorist” from Hamas, without elaborating. The military said it “regrets any harm to uninvolved individuals” and that the “the incident is under review.”
It will take years to educate a new generation of surgeons and other specialists to replace the ones killed during the war between Hamas and Israel, Abu Selmia said. For now, hospitals have too few experts to provide urgent care at a time of extraordinary need, he said.
Hospitals across Gaza also face supply shortages amid steady Israeli bombardment that is resulting in a high number of wounded people seeking treatment on a near-daily basis.
A health care system in crisis
More than 1,400 Palestinian health workers have been killed in Gaza since the war began in October 2023, according to the United Nations.
The Israeli military has raided or laid siege to hospitals throughout the war, accusing Hamas of using them as command centers and to hide fighters, though it has only provided evidence for some of its claims. The World Health Organization has documented nearly 700 attacks on health care facilities during the war.
Al-Sultan gained respect and notoriety within Gaza’s medical community because he refused to leave his hospital in the northern Gaza city of Beit Lahiya, even when it came under attack. He was outspoken on social media about the dangers health workers faced in the hospital under Israeli bombardment and siege.
Al-Sultan was the last director of the Indonesian Hospital, the largest in northern Gaza before the Israeli military forced it to close in early June because of military operations around it.
In May, Al-Sultan described the difficult situation health workers at his facility faced. “We will keep holding on for our patients, for our jobs and our people,” he said in a video posted online by his hospital’s backers.
Al-Sultan had plenty of opportunities to practice medicine in other countries, said Dr. Mohammed Al-Assi, who studied with him in Jordan. But he decided to go home to serve in Gaza in 2019. Al-Assi, inspired by his friend, followed him.
When he heard the news of his killing, Al-Assi was shattered. “I’m wondering as any doctor would, was it his fault that he was helping people?”
Other former colleagues were similarly overwhelmed by news of Al-Sultan’s death.
“A wave of emotion hit me as I suddenly remembered our last video call — how he kept asking me about me and my family when it should have been the other way around,” said Dr. Emad Shaqoura, a former vice dean of the medical faculty at Islamic University who is now in the UK
The missile that killed Al-Sultan struck the third-floor apartment he was renting with his family in the Gaza City neighborhood of Tal Al-Hawa, witnesses and doctors said. His wife, a daughter, and son-in-law were also killed.
Another daughter, Lubna Al-Sultan, said the missile crashed into his room around 2 p.m., leaving other units in the building intact. The Al-Sultan family had been displaced from their home.
“It was not collateral damage,” said Dr. Hadiki Habib, chairman of the Indonesian humanitarian organization that built and funded the Indonesian hospital.
The day before he was killed, Al-Sultan spoke with Abu Selmia about how they would prepare a new schedule for cases and treatment. He was one of two doctors left capable of performing a procedure to diagnose and treat heart problems, said Abu Selmia.
“Dr. Marwan was the trainer and mentor for all those students in Shifa Hospital and in the entirety of Gaza City,” Abu Selmia said.
Other prominent doctors in Gaza have also been killed
In the 2022 photo of Islamic University’s faculty of medicine, four other members are also no longer alive.
— Dr. Adnan Al-Bursh, once the head of Shifa’s orthopedics department, died in Israeli detention, allegedly of ill-treatment, according to Palestinian authorities and advocacy groups. An independent autopsy on his body, which has not been returned to his family, has not been conducted. His wife said repeated requests to return his body have not been answered.
— Dr. Hammam Alloh, a kidney expert, was killed at home with his family by an airstrike in November 2023.
— Dr. Mohammed Dabbour, Gaza’s first cancer pathologist, was killed in an airstrike on October 2023, along with his father and son.
— Dr. Rafat Lubbad, head of internal medicine at Shifa and one of few specialists in autoimmune diseases, was killed in November 2023, along with 7 family members, in Gaza City.
Hospitals overwhelmed with casualties
Only 17 of Gaza’s 36 hospitals remain operational, according to the WHO, which says that all are struggling with severe supply shortages. Of the hospitals that are functioning, only 12 provide services beyond basic emergency care.
Conditions in northern Gaza, where Al-Sultan lived and worked, are particularly dire. The area has been site of some of the most intense Israeli military operations since the start of the war, and although there were many evacuation orders, many of its residents remain.
Abu Selmia considers what the future might hold for the doctors still alive and forever smiling in that 2022 medical school graduation photo. There are barely enough of them to tend to the vast numbers of sick and wounded, he said.
But he holds on to some small hope.
Al-Sultan’s son, Ahmed, is a medical student. “God willing, he will follow his father’s footsteps.”
Tunisia hands lengthy prison terms to top politicians and former security officials
- A total of 21 were charged in the case, with 10 already in custody and 11 having fled the country
TUNIS: A Tunisian court on Tuesday handed jail terms of 12 to 35 years on high-profile politicians, including opposition leader Rached Ghannouchi and former security officials, a move that critics say underscores the president’s use of the judiciary to cement authoritarian rule.
Among those sentenced on charges of conspiring against the state in the major mass trial, were Nadia Akacha, the former chief of staff to President Kais Saied, local radio Mosaique FM said. Akacha who fled abroad received 35 years.
Ghannouchi, 84, veteran head of the Islamist-leaning Ennahda party, was handed a 14-year term.
Ghannouchi who was the speaker of the elected parliament dissolved by Saied, has been in prison since 2023, receiving three sentences of a total of 27 years in separate cases in recent months.
A total of 21 were charged in the case, with 10 already in custody and 11 having fled the country.
The court sentenced former intelligence chief Kamel Guizani to 35 years, former Foreign Minister Rafik Abdessalem to 35 years, and Mouadh Ghannouchi, son of Rached Ghannouchi, to 35 years. All three have fled the country.
Saied dissolved the parliament in 2021 and began ruling by decree, then dissolved the independent Supreme Judicial Council and sacked dozens of judges, a move that opposition called a coup which undermined the nascent democracy that sparked in 2011 the Arab Spring uprisings.
Saied rejects the accusations and says his steps are legal and aim to end years of chaos and corruption hidden within the political elite.
Most opposition leaders, some journalists, and critics of Saied have been imprisoned since he seized control of most powers in 2021.
This year, a court handed jail terms of 5 to 66 years to opposition leaders, businessmen and lawyers on charges of conspiring as well, a case the opposition says is fabricated in an attempt to stamp out opposition to the president.
Human rights groups and activists say Saied has turned Tunisia into an open-air prison and is using the judiciary and police to target his political opponents.
Saied rejects these accusations, saying he will not be a dictator.
