A Libyan official said on Wednesday that the efforts of local and international teams, 17 days after floods in the east of the country, are concentrated in the sea in search of missing people whose numbers exceeded 10,<>.

Walid Boubaker, media official at the crisis committee at the Ministry of Interior in the Libyan parliament government, added that local and foreign teams are currently focusing their efforts in the disaster-stricken areas on the sea, after losing hope of finding neighborhoods on land.

On September 10, Cyclone Daniel swept through several areas in eastern Libya, most notably the cities of Benghazi, Al-Bayda, Al-Marj and Sousse, in addition to other areas, including Derna, which was the most affected among them, leaving thousands of dead and missing and significant material damage.

On September 24, a government committee mandated by the Libyan parliament announced that the death toll from the cyclone stood at 3868,16, close to one reported by the World Health Organization on 3958 September when it reported that 9,<> people had died and more than <>,<> were missing.

More neighborhoods

Since it was announced that two surviving sisters had been found inside a demolished house in the city of Derna by the Libyan Red Crescent on 17 September, no more survivors have been announced.

However, Boubacar said, "We may find alive, as the search efforts among the rubble of buildings on land are still ongoing, but at a lower pace."

"Most of the international rescue teams working to track dogs and other technologies used in building accidents on the ground have left, and few remain."

The Libyan official added in statements to Anadolu Agency that "efforts are currently focused on searching in the sea, because the floods threw thousands of residents, especially in Derna, into the sea, but it is difficult because of the rubble of buildings and cars inside the sea."

"Two other things make the task of the search teams difficult at sea, the first is the presence of hundreds of cave-like rocky cavities known in Libya as water fields, and the second is the decomposition of thousands of bodies due to salinity, which makes the recovery of the deceased difficult," Boubaker said.

On September 24, Libya's parliament government announced that eight international search and rescue teams were still operating in the flood-hit city of Derna along with other cities in the east of the country.