Rescue workers sit in front of an excavator in Derna,Libya.Credit:AP
On the seafront,an excavator moved smashed furniture and cars to try to find victims underneath. Another excavator cleared rubble from buildings as rescue workers paused and knelt nearby to pray.
In al Badya,a coastal settlement west of Derna,the hospital was treating victims from Derna as well as its own. Doctors built makeshift dams in the street when the flooding hit to try to hold back the water,but it rose within the building.
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The flooding affected machinery on the lower level of the hospital,the hospital’s head,Abdel Rahim Mazek,said.
The country of 7 million people has lacked a strong central government since a NATO-backed uprising that toppled Muammar Gaddafi in 2011 and its oil wealth has been dispersed among competing groups.
Analysts said the disaster had brought some co-ordination between the internationally backed administration in Tripoli in the west and the rival administration in the east but that reconstruction efforts would likely reopen fault-lines.
AP