Libyan authorities have opened an investigation into the collapse of two dams that caused a devastating flood in a coastal city as rescue teams searched for bodies on September 16, nearly a week after the deluge killed more than 11,000 people.

Heavy rains caused by Mediterranean storm Daniel caused deadly flooding across eastern Libya last weekend. The floods overwhelmed two dams, sending a wall of water several metres high through the centre of Derna, destroying entire neighborhoods and sweeping people out to sea.

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More than 10,000 people are missing, according to the Libyan Red Crescent. Six days on, searchers are still digging through mud and hollowed-out buildings, looking for bodies and possible survivors. The Red Crescent has confirmed 11,300 deaths so far.

Claire Nicolet, who heads the emergencies department of the Doctors Without Borders aid group, said that rescuers found “a lot of bodies” on Friday and were still searching.

“It was a big number … the sea is still ejecting lots of dead bodies unfortunately,” she told AP.

She said major aid efforts were still needed, including urgent psychological support for those who lost their families. She said the burial of bodies is still a significant challenge, despite some progress in coordinating search and rescue efforts and the distribution of aid.

Authorities and aid groups have voiced concern about the spread of waterborne diseases and shifting of explosive ordnance from Libya’s recent conflicts.

Haider al-Saeih, head of Libya’s center for combating diseases, said in televised comments Saturday that at least 150 people had suffered from diarrhea after drinking contaminated water in Derna. He urged residents to only drink bottled water, which is being shipped in as part of relief efforts.

Libya’s General Prosecutor, al-Sediq al-Sour, said that prosecutors would investigate the collapse of the two dams, which were built in the 1970s, as well as the allocation of maintenance funds. He said prosecutors would investigate local authorities in the city, as well as previous governments.

“I reassure citizens that whoever made mistakes or negligence, prosecutors will certainly take firm measures, file a criminal case against him and send him to trial,” he told a news conference in Derna late Friday.

Also Read | Libya’s deadly floods: what we know

It’s unclear how such an investigation can be carried out in the North African country, which plunged into chaos after a NATO-backed uprising toppled longtime dictator Moammar Gadhafi in 2011. For most of the past decade, Libya has been split between rival administrations — one in the east, the other in the west — each backed by powerful militias and international patrons.

One result has been the neglect of crucial infrastructure, even as climate change makes extreme weather events more frequent and severe.

Jalel Harchaoui, an expert on Libya at the London-based Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies, said that an investigation could pose “a unique challenge” to judicial authorities, since it could lead to the highest ranks of leadership in eastern and western Libya.

Since 2014, eastern Libya has been under the control of Gen. Khalifa Hifter and his self-styled Libyan National Army. A rival government, based in the capital, Tripoli, controls most national funds and oversees infrastructure projects. Neither tolerates dissent.

“The key challenge to a thorough investigation is the Hifter coalition’s longstanding behaviour; its historic lack of accountability writ large could obstruct the unearthing of truths,” Mr. Harchaoui said.

Local officials in the city had warned the public about the coming storm and last Saturday ordered residents to evacuate coastal areas in Derna, fearing a surge from the sea. But there was no warning about the dams, which collapsed early Monday as most residents were asleep in their homes.

A report by a state-run audit agency in 2021 said the two dams hadn’t been maintained despite the allocation of more than $2 million for that purpose in 2012 and 2013.

A Turkish firm was contracted in 2007 to carry out maintainence on the two dams and build another dam in between. The firm, Arsel Construction Company Ltd., said on its website that it completed its work in November 2012. It didn’t respond to an email seeking further comment.

Local and international rescue teams were meanwhile working around the clock, searching for bodies and potential survivors in the city of 90,000 people.

Ayoub said that his father and nephew died in Derna on Monday, a day after the family had fled flooding in the nearby town of Bayda. He said that his mother and sister raced upstairs to the roof but the others didn’t make it.

“I found the kid in the water next to his grandfather,” said Ayoub, who only gave his first name. “I am wandering around and I still don’t believe what happened.”

Al-Sour, the top prosecutor, called on residents who have missing relatives to report to a forensic committee that works on documenting and identifying retrieved bodies.

“We ask citizens to cooperate and quickly proceed to the committee’s headquarters, so that we can finish the work as quickly as possible,” he said.

Libyan authorities have restricted access to the flooded city to make it easier for searchers to dig through the mud and hollowed-out buildings for the more than 10,000 people still missing. Many bodies were believed to have been buried under rubble or swept out into the Mediterranean Sea, they said.

The storm hit other areas in eastern Libya, including the towns of Bayda, Susa, Marj and Shahatt. Tens of thousands of people have been displaced in the region and took shelter in schools and other government buildings.

Dozens of foreigners were among those killed, including people who had fled war and unrest elsewhere in the region. Others had come to Libya to work or were traveling through in hopes of migrating to Europe. At least 74 men from one village in Egypt perished in the flood, as well as dozens of people who had traveled to Libya from war-torn Syria.

Residents and rescue workers in the devastated Libyan city of Derna were struggling to cope with the thousands of corpses washing up or decaying under rubble, after a flood that smashed down buildings and swept people out to sea.

The World Health Organization and other aid groups called on authorities in Libya to stop burying flood victims in mass graves, saying these could bring long-term mental distress to families or might cause health risks if located near water.

The aid agencies spoke after a U.N. report showed more than 1,000 people had so far been buried in that manner since Libya, a nation divided by decade of conflict and political chaos, was hit on Sunday by torrential rain from a Mediterranean storm.

Thousands were killed and thousands more are missing.

“Bodies are littering the streets, washing back on shore and are buried under collapsed buildings and debris. In just two hours, one of my colleagues counted over 200 bodies on the beach near Derna,” Bilal Sablouh, the ICRC’s regional forensics manager for Africa, told a briefing in Geneva.

Ibrahim al-Arabi, health minister in Libya’s Tripoli-based government in the west, told Reuters he was certain groundwater was polluted with water mixed up with corpses of people, dead animals, refuse and chemical substances. “We urge people not to approach the wells in Derna,” he said.

Mohammad al-Qabisi, head of Derna’s Wahda Hospital, said a field hospital was treating people with chronic illnesses needing regular attention. He said there were fears waterborne diseases would spread but no cholera cases had been recorded so far.

Swathes of Derna, the centrepoint of the destruction in Libya’s east, were obliterated when storm water swept down a usually dry riverbed, smashed two dams above the city and brought down whole buildings while families were asleep.

The International Organization for Migration mission in Libya said on Friday that more than 5,000 people were presumed dead, with 3,922 deaths registered in hospitals, and over 38,640 were displaced in the flood-stricken northeastern region.

The death toll could be far higher, officials say.

“We should be afraid of an epidemic,” 60-year-old Nouri Mohamed said at a bakery, which was offering loaves for free to help Derna’s shattered community. “There are still bodies underground … Now there are corpses starting to smell.”

The U.N. health agency together with the International Committee of the Red Cross and International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies called for better managed burials.

“We urge authorities in communities touched by tragedy to not rush forward with mass burials or mass cremations,” Kazunobu Kojima, medical officer for biosafety and biosecurity in the WHO’s Health Emergencies Programme, said in the statement.

The statement called for demarcated and documented individual graves, saying hasty interments could lead to mental anguish for families as well as social and legal problems.

The bodies of victims of trauma from natural disasters “almost never” posed a health threat, it said, unless they were in or near fresh water supplies since corpses may leak faeces.

Dealing with the dead

A doctor in Derna said this week that photos were taken of unidentified bodies before burial, in case relatives could identify them later on.

Thursday’s U.N. report said more than 1,000 bodies in Derna and over 100 bodies in Al Bayda, another coastal city which was hit by flooding, had been buried in mass graves.

The ICRC sent a cargo flight to Benghazi, eastern Libya’s largest city, on Friday with 5,000 body bags. Other aid has also been coming in from abroad.

The Norwegian Refugee Council, which has a team of 100 in Libya, said dead body management was the most pressing concern.

“I’ve heard from my team that there are mass graves where rescue workers were appealing: ‘Don’t bring us food, don’t bring us water, bring us body bags’,” the NRC’s Ahmed Bayram said.

The Danish Refugee Council said it is sending a team specialised in explosive ordinance disposal because of the risk of landmines being dislodged by flooding and moving around.

Some residents were frustrated that the country’s fractured authorities were not acting faster to help.

“The state is no of use to us,” said Saad Rajab Mohamed al-Hasi, a 50-year-old security officer who lives in Susah, a town about 60 km (38 miles) away that was also damaged by flooding. “Now I’m in the street with my children and wife.”

U.N. aid chief Martin Griffiths told the Geneva briefing that Libya needed equipment to find people trapped in sludge and damaged buildings after the floods as well as primary health care to prevent a cholera outbreak among survivors.