Libyans haunted by the fate of flood's missing
STORY: Crying out the names of her family in the Libyan city of Derna.
Sabreen Blil claws with her bare hands at flattened masonry.
A week after the flood that swept the center of the city into the sea, she's searching in vain to somehow reach her loved ones' bodies from under the rubble of her brother's house.
“Oh God. Even one body, my God. Just let me find even one body. God have mercy on us. Who can we hold accountable? Who is responsible? To whom can we say ‘you are responsible for this’? Who is responsible? What is the fault of the people and souls who died? Why would a whole family die? A whole family was finished.”
One week on, families are still coping with the unbearable losses of their dead.
Sitting by his damaged house and covered in mud, 69-year-old Derna resident Hassan Kassar could not hold back his tears after losing four of his children to the floods.
People are also haunted by the unknown fates of the missing.
The center of Derna is a wasteland of muddy mounds where buildings once stood.
Other buildings somehow still stand precariously above bottom floors that were mostly washed away.
Dams above the city burst in a storm a week ago, sending a huge torrent down a seasonal riverbed that runs through the center of the city of 120,000 people.
Thousands are dead and thousands more missing.
But authorities say they haven't given up hope of finding survivors.
Attentions are also turning to sanitation and safety.
Workers were sanitizing the streets on Monday as part of a campaign organized by the Libyan government to avoid the spread of diseases.
The biggest threat to survivors may now come from contaminated water supplies.
The head of one of the city's hospitals said there were fears waterborne diseases would spread, putting vulnerable people - especially women and children - at risk, but that no cholera cases had been recorded so far.
