Libya's flood-ravaged Derna in grisly hunt for thousands still missing

Emergency teams search for missing in Derna, Libya after flash flood kills 4,000. Floods caused by Storm Daniel, compounded by poor infrastructure, swept away entire city blocks and untold numbers of people. Survivors recount horror of rising water, bodies carried away. Mass burials, search for missing loved ones, bulldozers clear debris. Climate experts link disaster to impacts of heating planet, decaying infrastructure.

Emergency teams on Friday kept up their search for the thousands still posted as missing from the tsunami-sized flash flood that swept the Libyan port city of Derna, killing at least 4,000 people.

The enormous surge of water burst two upstream dams late Sunday and reduced Derna to an apocalyptic wasteland where entire city blocks and untold numbers of people were washed into the Mediterranean.

An AFP photographer said central neighbourhoods on either side of the river, which normally dries up at this time of year, looked as if a steam roller had passed through, uprooting trees and buildings and hurling vehicles onto the port's breakwaters.

Also read: Libya flood survivors pick through ruins in search of missing thousands; death toll may breach 20,000

"Within seconds the water level suddenly rose," recounted one injured survivor who said he was swept away with his mother in the late-night ordeal before they both managed to scramble into an empty building downstream.

"The water was rising with us until we got to the fourth floor, the water was up to the second floor," the unidentified man said from his hospital bed, in testimony published by the Benghazi Medical Center.

"We could hear screams. From the window, I saw cars and bodies being carried away by the water. It lasted an hour or an hour and a half -- but for us, it felt like a year."