By Walid Abdullah
TRIPOLI, Libya (AA) - Abdul Hamid Dbeibeh, the head of Libya’s Tripoli-based unity government, announced Tuesday the allocation of 2 billion Libyan dinars ($446.4 million) for the Benghazi and Derna Cities Reconstruction Fund to reconstruct the flood-stricken municipalities.
“Two billion Libyan dinars were allocated for the reconstruction of the affected municipalities that were destroyed by the floods,” the official Hokomitna platform reported.
Dbeibeh instructed “the Transportation Projects Implementation Agency to contract with specialized international companies to reconstruct concrete culverts and maintain a number of bridges in the affected areas in the east of the country.”
“The network of roads and bridges in Derna has totally collapsed,” Al-Hussein Sweidan, head of the roads and bridges department in the Tripoli-based government, told Anadolu. He estimated the cost to rebuild damaged roads and bridges in the city at around 300 million Libyan dinars ($67 million).
More than 5,300 people have died and many remain unaccounted for after floods caused by Storm Daniel struck eastern Libya, according to sources.
The International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent on Monday put the figure of missing people in the floods’ wake at 10,000.
Torrential rains from the powerful cyclone swept several areas Sunday in eastern Libya, most notably Benghazi, Al Bayda and Al-Marj, as well as Soussa and Derna.
Dbeibeh declared all areas disaster zones that were exposed to the storm and floods.
*Writing by Ikram Kouachi