dpa
Benghazi
The death toll following massive flooding in Libya has risen to about 11,300 in the worst-hit city of Derna alone, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said, but other officials disputed the figure and put it much lower.
OCHA added that another 10,100 were still missing in Derna, while an estimated 170 other people had been killed elsewhere in eastern Libya.
"These figures are expected to rise as search-and-rescue crews work tirelessly to find survivors,” OCHA said.
The UN agency attributed the figures to the Libyan Red Crescent. But a spokesman for the aid group voiced astonishment at the numbers and rejected them. "What are the sources of these numbers?” Tawfiq al-Shukri asked DPA.
"The official numbers are issued by the agency authorized by the Libyan authorities,” he said. Conflicting accounts have emerged from Libya, which is divided between warring administrations in east and west.
Earlier in the week, the mayor of Derna had said it was possible up to 20,000 people had died there. But on Saturday, the government based in the east of the country put the number of officially registered deaths at 3,252. Earlier, the World Health Organization (WHO) said nearly 4,000 people who were killed in the floods had been identified. A group of Libyan data analysts and researchers also said there had been around 4,000 confirmed deaths in a count on Saturday.
A powerful storm dubbed Daniel hit Libya on September 10 after earlier lashing Greece, Bulgaria and Turkey. Two dams broke in the mountains above the port of Derna, washing away large areas of the city of around 100,000 people. Al-Shukri of the Libyan Red Crescent said on Sunday that the sear and rescue situation in Derna was "better” now with the engagement of several Libyan and foreign teams.