Sparse international aid despite ‘enormous challenges’
This disaster would have challenged a “really rich, fully functioning” country, says Alex Crawford of Sky News.
“So the challenges here are enormous”, she says, given how many problems Libya was already facing.
Among them are two opposing governments in the east and west, the legacy of a NATO military campaign, civil war, widespread weaponry and “extreme poverty”, she explains.
International relief crews are coming but “they are small compared to the problem”, Crawford adds.
People from all parts of the country have instead travelled to try to help.
“They feel once again that they’re not really getting the sort of response that, for instance, those sufferers in the Turkey earthquake got,” says Crawford.
Families left using shovels to find buried relatives
The search for survivors continues, but there is criticism too little help has come too late from the international community, reports special correspondent Alex Crawford from Derna.
Families have been using shovels and picks to find relatives beneath the rubble.
International teams that have arrived seem unprepared for the scale of the disaster, she says.
“Who wants to carry on, knowing their family are buried there rotting. Please help us and have mercy on us, we have suffered enough,” says one man.
“There’s no help, there’s nobody to help. There’s no government. They have been buried here for five days,” says another.
Crawford says she has seen trees on top of apartment blocks, a coastline packed with cars and a city centre smashed by the force of the water.
You must log in to post a comment.