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Rescuers are calling for more body bags to be sent to a Libyan city hit by catastrophic flooding – as fears grow of waterborne diseases spreading.

Multi-storey buildings were washed into the sea while families slept on Sunday, when a powerful storm burst dams and left Derna severely flooded.

The number of dead could reach 20,000, according to the city’s mayor, with at least 30,000 displaced.

Mayor Abdulmenam al-Ghaithi said they need teams “specialised in recovering bodies”.

Read more: What caused flooding in Libya?

“I fear that the city will be infected with an epidemic due to the large number of bodies under the rubble and in the water,” he added.

People walk in the mud between the rubbles, after a powerful storm and heavy rainfall hit Libya, in Derna, Libya September 13, 2023. REUTERS/Esam Omran Al-Fetori
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People walk in the mud between the rubbles in the wake of Storm Daniel

Search team director Lutfi al-Misrati echoed the mayor’s worries, and added to Al Jazeera: “We need bags for bodies.”

Rescue teams have arrived from Egypt, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, and Qatar, the mayor said, as the beach remains littered with clothes, toys and furniture.

Deep mud covers the streets, which are also strewn with hundreds of wrecked cars and fallen trees – one car was even wedged on a second-floor balcony.

A father grieves

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Libya: Grieving father mourns son

Footage of one man, described by the charity Libyan Red Crescent Society as a grieving father, showed his distress as his son’s body was recovered from a collapsed building and prepared for transportation.

“May God make your reward great. Remember God. There is no God but God. May God grant you patience,” one of the rescuers said.

The father replied: “Keep them there, don’t carry them at all. I will do it.”

“Our hearts are with you, we’re all with you,” the rescuer said.

satellite images Libya
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Satellite images show the damage in Libya

It came as the King sent a letter of condolence to the chairman of the Libyan Presidential Council, Mohamed al-Menfi.

The message read: “My wife and I are so desperately saddened by the devastating impact and loss of life caused by Storm Daniel and the subsequent floods.

“We mourn with all those who have lost their loved ones, and continue to pray for everyone whose lives and livelihoods have been affected by the horrific floods.

“I admire greatly all those who are engaged tirelessly in the rescue efforts in such dire conditions, and praise their selfless bravery.”

Aid from the UK

A view shows damaged cars, after a powerful storm and heavy rainfall hit Libya, in Derna, Libya September 13, 2023. REUTERS/Esam Omran Al-Fetori
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A view shows damaged cars, after a powerful storm and heavy rainfall hit Derna in Libya

Earlier on Wednesday, the UK government announced an initial aid package worth up to £1m to meet the immediate needs of those affected in Derna.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, it is “shocking to see the scale of the loss and devastation caused by the floods in Libya”, adding that the UK is “working to provide immediate assistance to the Libyan people”.

Libyan officials appealed for international help on Monday, warning the country doesn’t have the necessary experience to deal with a disaster of this scale.

Health officials said on Wednesday the number of deaths in the city had risen to more than 5,100 – while a minister has said 5,300 bodies in the country’s east had been recovered.

Floodwaters from Mediterranean storm Daniel are visible on Tuesday, Sept. 12, 2023 
Pic:AP
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Floods covered the city. Pic: AP

Search teams have been combing streets, wrecked buildings and even the sea to look for bodies in the coastal Libyan city.

Storm Daniel caused significant damage to roads and telecoms networks on Sunday – with strong winds and sudden heavy rainfall devastating the port city of Derna – about 560 miles (900km) east of the capital, Tripoli.

The “sea is constantly dumping dozens of bodies”, Hichem Abu Chkiouat, minister of civil aviation in the administration that runs eastern Libya, said, adding that reconstruction would cost billions of dollars.

“We have counted more than 5,300 dead so far, and the number is likely to increase significantly and may even double because the number of missing people is also thousands,” he said.

Seven-metre waves

A general view of the city of Derna following Storm Daniel and catastrophic flooding
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A general view of the city of Derna following Storm Daniel and catastrophic flooding

As Storm Daniel pounded the coast on Sunday night, Derna residents said they heard loud explosions when dams outside the city collapsed.

Floodwaters washed down the riverbed, which runs from the mountains through the city and into the sea.

Waves measuring seven metres (23ft) high “destroyed everything in their path”, Yann Fridez, head of the delegation of the International Committee for The Red Cross in Libya, told France24.

“The human toll is enormous,” he said.

Read more:
Libya flood: Before and after pictures show devastation

What caused sheer scale of death and destruction in eastern city of Derna?

Ahmed Abdalla, a survivor who joined the search and rescue effort, said they were putting bodies in the garden of a local hospital before taking them for burial in mass graves at the city’s only intact cemetery.

President Joe Biden also said the United States is sending emergency funds to relief organisations and coordinating with the Libyan authorities and the UN to provide additional support.

But the arrival of aid has been hampered due to the destruction of roads leading to the city.

Bridges over the Derna river that links the city’s eastern and western parts have also collapsed, according to the UN’s migration agency.

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Florida: Woman whose remains were found in alligator’s mouth identified by police

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Florida: Woman whose remains were found in alligator's mouth identified by police

Police have identified a woman whose remains were found in the mouth of a 13ft alligator in Florida.

The body of 41-year-old Sabrina Peckham was pulled from a canal in Largo, about 20 miles west of Tampa, after a witness spotted her in the alligator’s mouth, the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office said.

The animal was “humanely killed”, the sheriff’s office said, and the coroner’s office will perform a post-mortem examination to determine the official cause of death, but it is suspected Ms Peckham was killed by the alligator.

Sabrina Peckham (left) and her daughter Breauna Dorris
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Sabrina Peckham (L), pictured with her daughter Breauna Dorris, has been identified as the victim

Ms Peckham’s daughter said her mother was homeless and lived near the water, and countered claims her mother had been taunting the animal.

Breauna Dorris wrote on Facebook: “Some details I would like to share is that my mother did not ‘taunt’ the alligator as some are saying in the news outlets comments.

“My mother was a part of the homeless population that lived in the nearby wooded area.

“It is believed that she may have been walking to or from her campsite near the creek in the dark and the alligator attacked from the water.”

She added: “No matter how you put it, no one deserves to die like this.”

A GoFundMe page has been set up for Ms Peckham to raise money for funeral costs, which has raised nearly $6,000 so far.

Witness ‘threw a rock at the alligator’

The alligator was spotted by Jamarcus Bullard, who saw the reptile and a body in the water on Friday afternoon.

“I threw a rock at the gator just to see if it was really a gator,” he told a TV affiliate of NBC News, Sky News’ US partner network.

“It pulled the body, like it was holding on to the lower part of the torso, and pulled it under the water.”

Read more:
Hunters kill record-breaking alligator after all-night battle
Man survives alligator attack by ‘grabbing its teeth, tongue and snout’
Man dies in alligator-filled lake while looking for frisbees

Jamarcus Bullard said he saw the alligator and a body in the water on Friday afternoon Pic: NBC
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Jamarcus Bullard said he saw the alligator and a body in the water. Pic: NBC

Mr Bullard said he started recording on his phone and contacted the authorities.

The discovery has left some locals nervous, with Jennifer Dean telling TV station WFLA that her children frequently walk by the canal.

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Sicilian mafia boss Matteo Messina Denaro has died

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Sicilian mafia boss Matteo Messina Denaro has died

Sicilian mafia boss Matteo Messina Denaro, who was arrested in January after spending 30 years on the run, has died, according to Italian media reports.

The 61-year-old was suffering from cancer at the time of his arrest.

As his condition worsened in recent weeks he was transferred to a hospital from the maximum-security prison in central Italy where he was initially held.

He was convicted of numerous crimes, including for his role in planning the 1992 murders of anti-mafia prosecutors Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino – crimes that shocked Italy and sparked a crackdown on the Sicilian mob.

Read more:
Godfather and Joker posters found in apartment used by mafia boss
Man whose identity was used by prolific mafia boss arrested in Sicily

He was also held responsible for bombings in Rome, Florence and Milan in 1993 that killed 10 people, as well as helping organise the kidnapping of Giuseppe Di Matteo, 12, to try to dissuade the boy’s father from giving evidence against the mafia.

The boy was held for two years, then murdered.

More on Italy

Dubbed by the Italian press as “the last Godfather”, Messina Denaro is not believed to have given any information to the police after he was seized outside a private health clinic in the Sicilian capital, Palermo, on 16 January.

According to medical records leaked to the Italian media, he underwent surgery for colon cancer in 2020 and 2022 under a false name.

A doctor at the Palermo clinic told La Repubblica newspaper that Messina Denaro’s health had worsened significantly in the months leading up to his capture.

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The sleepy Russian village where a pardoned ex-convict back from Ukraine carried out butchery

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The sleepy Russian village where a pardoned ex-convict back from Ukraine carried out butchery

The village of Derevyannoe in Karelia, northwest Russia, has a well-kept feel to it. Apple trees heavy with fruit and tidy vegetable gardens, boats on trailers ready for sailing in the nearby lake and wood stacked up high for winter.

Up above you can just about make out the sound of woodpeckers tapping away in the pine forest canopy as dogs bark fiercely behind corrugated iron. It does not look like a place for mass murder, but where does.

Irina Zhamoidina stands in front of the charred remains of her brother, Artyom Tereschenko’s home. He and her 71-year-old father, Vladimir, were murdered here on the night of 1 August when two men, both of them ex-convicts, one fresh back from the frontline, broke in and stabbed father and son to death before setting the property on fire.

Mr Taroschenko’s children, aged nine and 12, managed to escape through a window and raise the alarm.

Diana Magnay wagner violence

“My dad definitely did not deserve such a death,” Ms Zhamoidina says quietly. “We are from a good family. This is not how he should have died.”

The two men then continued down the road to another house a few hundred metres away and killed all four who lived there, three men and a woman, before setting their house on fire too. A drunken binge with a dose of drugs mixed in, Ms Zhamoidina thinks – a ‘zapoi’, as they’re known in Russia – turned murderous one sleepy summer night.

One of the men, Maxim Bochkarev, was known locally as a troublemaker. He had served time at a prison colony in St Petersburg for theft, carjacking, rape and sexual assault which is where he met his partner in crime, Igor Sofonov.

Artyom and his wife
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Artyom Taroschenko and his wife

Sofonov, 37, had three more years to go for theft, robbery and attempted murder but was recruited straight from jail by Russia’s Ministry of Defence and sent to Ukraine, a practice started by the late Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin and adopted enthusiastically by the Russian military.

“I believe that anyone who was in prison, even if he went to war, then he should be sent back when he was done for such serious crimes,” Ms Zhamoidina says. “They should not live among us because cases like this do happen.”

She is right. The catalogue of violent crimes committed by pardoned ex-offenders is picking up as they trickle back home.

Diana Magnay wagner violence

In June, Prigozhin said 32,000 recruited by Wagner were heading back to Russia, their records wiped clean.

Already in the southern city of Krasnodar, a Wagner ex-convict is on trial for murdering two people on their way home from work, a charge he denies. There have been cases of murder, sexual assault, child molestation from convicted sexual offenders.

In Novy Burets, about 500 miles east of Moscow, a Wagner ex-convict murdered an elderly lady, again on a drunken binge, even after locals repeatedly expressed their alarm to authorities that he was wandering their streets.

Read more:
Prigozhin’s ‘death’ seems to reveal a Russian principle
How Russia may seek to exploit crisis-hit Niger

diana magnay wagner violence
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A few hundred metres away from Artyom’s home, four people were killed in another house

Three years ago we travelled to the Siberian city of Kemerovo to cover a case of domestic violence which had culminated in the brutal murder of 23-year-old Vera Pekhteleva. Her story had shocked the country after the audio recordings of her screams, as neighbours made repeated, desperate calls to police, went viral. In court, her uncle had sat just metres away from the killer, Vladislav Kanyus, as he was sentenced to 17 years in jail. Now from social media photos, he knows that Kanyus is a free man, recruited by the Ministry of Defence and serving somewhere in Ukraine.

“He murdered her with extreme cruelty,” Mr Pekhtelev said. “He was tormenting Vera for three hours, and now he will have been trained to fight. I just can’t imagine what will happen if he comes back.”

The blue building and blue corridor are Leningradsky Proskpekt, Kemerovo where the murder happend.  In flat 738.
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Leningradsky Proskpekt, in Kemerovo, the site of the murder three years ago

The blue building and blue corridor are Leningradsky Proskpekt, Kemerovo where the murder happened.  In flat 738.
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Blue and white corridors outside the scene of the killing in Leningradsky Proskpekt

Changes to Russian legislation in June propose allowing suspected or convicted criminals to fight but not once a verdict takes effect. The reality of Russia’s prisoner recruitment though seems a lot murkier. According to the UK’s Ministry of Defence, it is part of a “broader, intense drive by the Russian military to bolster its numbers, while attempting to avoid implementing new mandatory mobilisation, which would be very unpopular”.

It is a policy which will see hardened criminals, traumatised by war, returning in their thousands with precious little in the way of psychological support or rehabilitation to speak of. Just as with domestic violence in Russia, authorities do not engage sufficiently with these kind of social issues back home, and especially not when there is a war on. But this is the stuff which tears at the social fabric of towns and villages across the country. This is one more of the many unintended consequences of war. Beyond the the zinc coffins and the escalating drone onslaught, this is how war comes home.

Alexandra Sofonova, Igor’s sister, believes the state should give psychological support to men like her brother, but she is sure that it won’t. “He served his duty, he was wounded – he’s a man and they’re proud of things like this. And then he came back and turned out to be unnecessary, he couldn’t even get a passport, he goes to glue wallpaper. Maybe something clicked in his head”, she says.

On the back of a supermarket wall a few feet from where we sit there is a piece of graffiti scrawled in large black letters. “Putin, no to war,” it says. I ask Alexandra what she thinks about it.

Diana Magnay wagner violence
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“Putin, no to war”

“I don’t know what kind of special operation this is,” she says. “Many of my friends died and are returning in zinc coffins. But they are dying for nothing. What are we fighting to win?”

The other sister in this story, Irina Zhamoidina, whose men were murdered back home, says it is her faith in God which gets her through each painful day.

“I’m afraid for the whole country. No one has the right to kill another, to take a life. They were not given this right”, she says. “We must stop this somehow, so that these kind of people are not among normal society.”

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