Libya floods: Hope remains survivors can found after Derna dam disaster as ‘cries heard’ beneath rubble
Everyone in Derna is desperate for good news right now after days and days of utter misery and collective, searing suffering.
So, the suggestion there are noises from below ground, under a house encased in mud and rubble, is grasped eagerly.
No matter how unrealistic, plain miraculous and completely staggering this may seem to others, those in Derna want survivors.
Maybe they just need hope, hope that this agony they’re all going through can somehow be assuaged.
We watch as a growing crowd of volunteers, health workers, troops and neighbours rush to the scene as word spreads.
A young volunteer wearing a blue hospital gown tells the fire crews there that he has heard cries from a woman – twice.
“How certain are you,” I ask him.
“I’m sure,” he replies. “100 per cent.”
People involved in the rescue operation are clinging onto hope
People spent hours digging by hand in the desperate hope of finding survivors
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But looking at the patch which was once home to three little girls who were nine, 10 and 11, it’s hard to believe anyone could still be alive under there.
It is a mound of thick mud, so hard and impenetrable, it takes several of those gathered to chip away at the top layer with shovels and pick axes.
It becomes apparent this is all the equipment they have to hand to try to shift the mountain of debris which has been deposited on top of the home.
A crowd of volunteers, health workers, troops and neighbours rushed to the site after news spread of noises beneath the rubble
A young volunteer told fire crew he heard cries from a woman twice at the site
Even the house itself is not thought to be in its original position.
Neighbours are telling the rescue crews that the torrent of water which swept through Derna actually shifted the entire building from its foundations and moved it several metres.
It seems to have been partially protected by another huge building in front and several established palm trees but there are a number of upturned cars around it – and tonnes and tonnes of other debris carpeting it.
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What happened in Derna?
Another man steps forward to say he’s been contacted by a friend of the family who once lived there.
The family friend insists he was phoned by one of the little girls. She says she’s trapped under the house and she’s using her father’s abandoned phone which is somehow still working.
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The chance that a mobile phone might still be working more than a week on from the disaster doesn’t strike them as impossible.
Nor does the idea that a little girl may have somehow be able to make it work in darkness beneath ground.
Hope – even the slightest glimmer of it – fuels this frenetic search which gathers more and more pace and more and more people.
They dig by hands for hours with growing numbers of people taking part, shifting rubble, concrete slabs and pulling out even a fridge from beneath.
They find a cavity and begin shouting down it calling for silence. Someone says they hear a responding bang and celebrations erupt. It generates even more enthusiasm for digging and even more people gather.
People have been digging by hand for hours, shifting rubble, concrete slabs and even pulling out a fridge from beneath.
Volunteers waiting in silence as hope begins to fade
The search goes on by hand until dusk until a mechanical digger – one of the very few – is encouraged to come to the area.
It shifts huge slabs of concrete but still, there’s nothing.
No one has heard a noise for a long time by now. Despondency creeps in and slowly the crowd dissipates. Soon there is just a rump of people still digging by hand.
The search continues by nightfall – but despondency creeps in, as the crowd slowly dissipates, leaving just a handful digging by hand
They slowly move away one by one. In truth it was only hope which fed this search.
The rescue team feel they’ve failed…but with so much stacked against them from the off, in truth they, the little girl and all the people of this city, stood little chance.
Alex Crawford was reporting from the east Libyan port city of Derna with cameraman Jake Britton and producer Chris Cunningham.
World
‘It allows us to do our job’: Ukrainian artillery team buoyed by fresh ammunition after costly wait on frontline
Sat in a makeshift shelter on the outskirts of a frontline town in eastern Ukraine, the soldier – callsign “Zaur” – shared some rare, good news: new ammunition appeared to be arriving.
He did not know the precise details but said fresh supplies started to be delivered about a week or two earlier.
This was making a difference for his artillery team as they fought to defend Chasiv Yar from advancing Russian forces.
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“It allows us to do our job, to hold off Russian soldiers, to restrain them, and also to destroy them when they attempt counterattacks,” Zaur said.
Ukrainian troops have been losing ground in the Donbas and now face a reopened front in the northeastern region of Kharkiv as they run short of ammunition and weapons following delays in the delivery of munitions from their allies, in particular the United States.
Even though American weapons are finally arriving to the frontline, the wait has been costly.
Zaur described the fight for Chasiv Yar, which has long been a Russian target. “It’s pretty intense. There are battles every day,” he said.
Should the hilltop town fall, it would give the invaders access to higher ground, enabling them to target artillery fire onto a wider area and putting cities in the remaining parts of the Donbas that are still under Ukrainian control at greater risk.
Asked whether Ukraine would manage to fend off the Chasiv Yar attack, the soldier, who commands the artillery unit, said: “We’ll try to hold on as much as possible, and time will tell…
“We’ll try our best… to do what’s necessary to survive.”
A Sky News team was shown around the artillery position under the cover of patchy woodland, next to some grassy mounds. Booms could be heard from distant fighting.
In a sign of the battle moving closer, soldiers had just finished digging a deep, narrow trench, which ran from the already-sheltered location of their self-propelled artillery gun – a 2S1 Gvozdika that fires 122mm rounds.
The trench had taken three days to dig. It had only been finished on the day we visited the area last week and – the soldiers said – had already been used to shelter from incoming rounds.
Russian troops have been trying to push into Chasiv Yar for the past year after seizing the nearby city of Bakhmut.
In recent weeks, though, they appear to have been edging closer – with a Ukrainian military medical stabilisation point forced to pull back to a city called Kostiantynivka.
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Russian soldiers advance in Ukrainian drone footage
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As we looked at the artillery site, there was suddenly an ominous sound.
A powerful rocket – I was not able to see it – was flying overhead.
Over a radio held by a soldier, a voice could be heard saying: “It was coming straight at us, then veered towards a five-storey building. It flew low, damn it.”
Within minutes, we became aware of another danger – a drone.
One of the troops said he thought it was a Ukrainian drone but from our position, it seemed impossible to be sure.
We were told that the commander thought it best for us to leave.
As we walked – quickly – across some open ground between two patches of tree cover, one of the Sky News team thought they could hear a self-exploding attack drone in flight.
Again, it was not possible to know for sure what was making the noise, but then came the sound of an explosion, though the impact site was not in the immediate vicinity.
In a final reminder of the battle, as we headed towards our vehicle, it was possible to see a black dot hovering above the trees – yet another drone.
A woman who has accused the prime suspect in the disappearance of Madeleine McCann of rape has described being attacked in her hotel room by a man holding a knife.
In emotional testimony on Wednesday, a woman recounted how a man dressed in black allegedly appeared in her hotel room in Portugal and raped her.
Christian B – whose surname cannot be published due to privacy laws in Germany – is accused of attacking the woman.
He also faces two other counts of rape and two of sexual abuse in his ongoing trial in Braunschweig.
The allegations do not relate to the disappearance of Madeleine McCann.
Speaking in court, the woman described the moment she realised there was a man she did not recognise in her hotel room in the middle of the night.
“I felt a fear that I had never feared before, all the blood drained from my head,” she said.
“I turned to see who called my name, saw a man dressed fully in black, with a knife.”
She had been staying in Praia la Rocha, just along the Portuguese coast from Praia da Luz where Madeleine disappeared from three years later.
During the woman’s testimony, Christian B sat motionless next to his lawyer, staring straight ahead.
The woman described being raped by her attacker who then left her tied up, before escaping out via the balcony.
The police were called and she was taken to hospital by ambulance.
“Only occasionally did they (the police) quickly ask something in English. They didn’t pay much attention to me. I was not in a good headspace,” she told the trial.
Gerry, left, and Kate McCann, present a picture of their missing daughter during a press conference in Berlin in 2007. Pic: AP
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Other charges facing Christian B include:
- Beating and sexually assaulting a girl aged at least 14 sometime between December 2000 and April 2006 at his house in Praia da Luz, Portugal
- Exposing himself to a 10-year-old German girl at a beach in Salema in the district of Faro in Portugal on 7 April 2007
- Exposing himself to an 11-year-old Portuguese girl at a playground in Bartolomeu de Messines in Portugal on 11 June 2017
Earlier in the trial, Christian B’s lawyer said the defendant “is using his right to remain silent”.
There are no formal pleas in the German legal system, and defendants are not obliged to respond to the charges.
Christian B is currently serving a seven-year prison sentence for the 2005 rape of a 72-year-old in Praia da Luz, the same town where Madeleine disappeared.
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