The centre of the eastern Libyan city of Derna is like one big graveyard – a mass of flattened buildings, wrecked lives and upended vehicles amid torn trees.
Huge nine-storey buildings have been ripped off their foundations and smothered by volumes of mud.
As we walked through the mountains of rubble, boulders and rocks, we had to keep reminding ourselves these were once people’s homes, this was once a street packed with shops and malls. Even the road was non-existent.
A few hours after daybreak there were small groups of civilians, some with just pickaxes, trampling over the boulders and rubble left in the centre in the wake of Storm Daniel.
They told us they travelled from Tobruk, Misrata and Benghazi to help in what must be a truly awful task.
Six days on, they were among several small groups setting out to try to locate their missing relatives who are included in the more than 10,000 still unaccounted for.
There were a few groups of soldiers, too – as well as pockets of health workers dressed in blue hospital gowns and wearing masks to save them from the stench of death that hung over this whole area.
Image: Entire buildings had been moved by the floodwater
The steaming heat has meant the corpses they found were putrid after nearly a week of decomposing.
They carried body bags.
Few here still held out hope of finding anyone alive.
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1:05
How the flooding cut through the city
Mediterranean turned a murky brown by ugly leftovers of tragedy
There was a lot of activity down at the port in Derna.
The normally blue Mediterranean sea had turned a murky brown.
There were clusters of relief workers gathered around watching a digger tear into the mountains of flotsam at the water’s edge.
Among the debris were upside-down smashed-up cars in different twisted states.
They looked as if some angry giant toddler had thrown them all there in a childish rage.
Image: Streets were strewn with mud and cars
We watched as the metal bucket of the digger sifted through the ugly leftovers of this tragedy.
The sea was covered in a blanket of chipped wood, broken-off metal, bits of wardrobe, and folded sodden mattresses.
Much of the debris bears no resemblance at all to its original state.
The digger operator was methodically trying to toss this all to one side as he looked for bodies.
There were divers on dinghies bobbing up and down on the waves who were also scouring the water.
Further out, an Italian naval ship was positioned off the coast. It had been helping recover those washed out to sea as the water smashed its way down Derna’s valley.
Stunned silence as body of young girl recovered from water
As various relief workers hung off the side of his cab and stood like sentinels on the back of the metal casing, the scoop was suddenly filled with the unmistakable shape of a small human.
There was a collective intake of horror as the momentum of the machine caused two thin legs to flop over the teeth of the digger’s scoop for a brief yet completely horrifying few seconds before falling back in.
It was the corpse of a young child – maybe 10 or 11.
Everyone witnessing this truly awful scene was stunned into silence.
It was entirely and utterly dreadful.
Image: Rescue workers pull the body of a child out of the sea
Two relief workers raced down carrying a black body bag and the child – who looked like a girl – was hurriedly tucked into it.
They raced back up the hill to deposit the body into the back of an ambulance.
It was not clear why they were scrambling but it crossed my mind they might just be saving those looking on from further trauma after a monumentally traumatic six days.
It’s estimated more than 10,000 are still unaccounted for – there is so much trauma yet to come.
Image: Men pray between digging
Image: A Libyan soldier inspects a destroyed flat
‘They should have known’
A structural engineer told Sky News the catastrophic disaster was down to negligence.
“They should have known,” Gandi Mohammed Hammoud told us.
He said he watched as his neighbours and friends screamed in terror as the torrent of water tore apart their homes and flats.
“Then it went silent – which means they died,” he told us. “We saw some friends literally being swept away in front of us.”
Image: Structural engineer Gandi Mohammed Hammoud
Mr Hammoud said there’d been plenty of warnings from engineers about the poor state of the city’s two dams and how several more needed to be built to halt the water caused by increasingly heavy yearly rainfall.
“Nothing has been done since 2008 and after the revolution to strengthen the two dams,” he told us.
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The instability, poor governance, corruption and mafia-style politicking here – including a network of people-smuggling gangs – have all conspired to make this tragedy possible.
Many Libyans believe the bombing during the NATO-backed military campaign to oust Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi also weakened the structures.
“Someone should pay for these deaths,” Mr Hammoud said. “Someone should be held accountable for what happened here.”
The IDF has admitted to mistakenly identifying a convoy of aid workers as a threat – following the emergence of a video which proved their ambulances were clearly marked when Israeli troops opened fire on them.
The bodies of 15 aid workers – including eight medics working for the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) – were found in a “mass grave” after the incident, according to the head of the UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs Jonathan Whittall.
The Israeli military originally claimed an investigation found the vehicles did not have any headlights or emergency signals and were therefore targeted as they looked “suspicious”.
But video footage obtained by the PRCS, and verified by Sky News, showed the ambulances and a fire vehicle clearly marked with flashing red lights.
In a briefing from the IDF, they said the ambulances arrived in the Tel Sultan neighbourhood in Rafah shortly after a Hamas police vehicle drove through.
Image: Palestinians mourning the medics after their bodies were recovered. Pic: Reuters
An IDF surveillance aircraft was watching the movement of the ambulances and notified troops on the ground. The IDF said it will not be releasing that footage.
When the ambulances arrived, the soldiers opened fire, thinking the medics were a threat, according to the IDF.
The soldiers were surprised by the convoy stopping on the road and several people getting out quickly and running, the IDF claimed, adding the soldiers were unaware the suspects were in fact unarmed medics.
An Israeli military official would not say how far away troops were when they fired on the vehicles.
The IDF acknowledged that its statement claiming that the ambulances had their lights off was incorrect, and was based on the testimony from the soldiers in the incident.
The newly emerged video footage showed that the ambulances were clearly identifiable and had their lights on, the IDF said.
The IDF added that there will be a re-investigation to look into this discrepancy.
Image: The clip is filmed through a vehicle windscreen – with three red light vehicles visible in front
Addressing the fact the aid workers’ bodies were buried in a mass grave, the IDF said in its briefing this is an approved and regular practice to prevent wild dogs and other animals from eating the corpses.
The IDF could not explain why the ambulances were also buried.
The IDF said six of the 15 people killed were linked to Hamas, but revealed no detail to support the claim.
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1:22
Bodies of aid workers found in Gaza
The newly emerged footage of the incident was discovered on a phone belonging to one of the workers who was killed, PRCS president Dr Younis Al Khatib said.
“His phone was found with his body and he recorded the whole event,” he said. “His last words before being shot, ‘Forgive me, mom. I just wanted to help people. I wanted to save lives’.”
Sky News used an aftermath video and satellite imagery to verify the location and timing of the newly emerged footage of the incident.
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2:43
Aid worker attacks increasing
It was filmed on 23 March north of Rafah and shows a convoy of marked ambulances and a fire-fighting vehicle travelling south along a road towards the city centre. All the vehicles visible in the convoy have their flashing lights on.
The footage was filmed early in the morning, with a satellite image seen by Sky News taken at 9.48am local time on the same day showing a group of vehicles bunched together off the road.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has hit out at the US over its “weak” response to lethal Russian attacks on his hometown on Friday.
President Zelenskyy posted a lengthy and emotional statement on X about Russia’s strikes on Kryvyi Rih, which killed 19 people.
Meanwhile Ukrainian drones hit an explosives factory in Russia’s Samara region in an overnight strike, a member of Ukraine’s SBU security service told Reuters.
In his post, President Zelenskyy accused the United States of being “afraid” to name-check Russia in its comment on the attack.
“Unfortunately, the reaction of the American Embassy is unpleasantly surprising: such a strong country, such a strong people – and such a weak reaction,” he wrote on X.
“They are even afraid to say the word “Russian” when talking about the missile that killed children.”
America’s ambassador to Ukraine Bridget Brink had written on X: “Horrified that tonight a ballistic missile struck near a playground and restaurant in Kryvyi Rih.
“More than 50 people injured and 16 killed, including 6 children. This is why the war must end.”
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5:49
Strike on Zelenskyy’s home city
President Zelenskyy went on in his post to say: “Yes, the war must end. But in order to end it, we must not be afraid to call a spade a spade.
“We must not be afraid to put pressure on the only one who continues this war and ignores all the world’s proposals to end it. We must put pressure on Russia, which chooses to kill children instead of a ceasefire.”
Grandmother ‘burned to death in her home’
Oleksandr Vilkul, head of the city’s defense council, said the missile attack, followed by a drone attack, had killed 19 people, including nine children.
“The Iskander-M missile strike with cluster munitions at the children’s playground in the residential area, to make the shrapnel fly further apart, killed 18 people.
“One grandmother was burnt to death in her house after Shahed’s direct hit.”
Russia’s defence ministry said it had struck a military gathering in a restaurant – an assertion rebutted by the Ukrainian military as misinformation.
“The missile hit right on the street – around ordinary houses, a playground, shops, a restaurant,” President Zelenskyy wrote.
Mr Zelenskyy also detailed the child victims of the attack including “Konstantin, who will be 16 forever” and “Arina, who will also be 7 forever”.
The UK’s chief of the defence staff Sir Tony Radakin said he had met the Ukrainian leader on Friday, along with French armed forces leader General Thierry Burkhard.
“Britain and France are coming together & Europe is stepping up in a way that is real & substantial, with 200 planners from 30 nations working to strengthen Ukraine’s long term security,” Sir Tony wrote.
Global financial markets gave a clear vote of no-confidence in President Trump’s economic policy.
The damage it will do is obvious: costs for companies will rise, hitting their earnings.
The consequences will ripple throughout the global economy, with economists now raising their expectations for a recession, not only in the US, but across the world.