Libya's eastern city of Derna has buried 700 people killed in devastating flooding and 10,000 are reported missing.

Libya’s eastern city of Derna has buried 700 people killed in devastating flooding and 10,000 were reported missing as rescue teams struggled to retrieve many more bodies from the horrific deluge, officials said Tuesday.

Mediterranean storm Daniel on Sunday night caused havoc and flash flooding in many towns in eastern Libya but the worst destruction was in Derna, where heavy rainfall and floods broke dams and washed away entire neighborhoods, authorities said.

“The situation is catastrophic,” said Othman Abduljaleel, the health minister in Libya’s eastern government. “The bodies are still lying on the ground in many parts (of the city). Hospitals are filled with bodies. And there are areas we have yet to reach.”

Authorities estimated earlier that as many as 2,000 people may have perished in Derna alone. The Ambulance and Emergency Authority, which coordinates search and rescue efforts, said Tuesday that about 2,300 people died in Derna but did not clarify what that figure was based on.

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    CAIRO (AP) — Rescue teams in eastern Libya have retrieved hundreds of bodies from the rubble in a coastal city that has been inundated by devastating floods, a humanitarian agency said Tuesday.

    Ossama Hamad, prime minister of the east Libya government, said that several thousand people were missing in the city and many were believed to have been carried away after two upstream dams burst.

    After more than a decade of chaos, Libya remains divided between two rival administrations: one in the east and one in the west, each backed by militias and foreign governments.

    They heard loud explosions at night and realized that dams outside the city collapsed, sending a wall of water that “erased everything in its way,” said Ahmed Abdalla, a Derna resident.

    Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates were among those that said they would send humanitarian assistance and teams to help with search and rescue efforts.

    The city was once a hub for extremist groups in the yearslong chaos that followed the NATO-backed uprising that toppled and killed longtime dictator Moammar Gadhafi in 2011.

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