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DERNA, Libya (Reuters) -Hundreds of people protested in the eastern Libyan city of Derna on Wednesday, venting anger against authorities and demanding accountability one week after a flood killed thousands of its residents and destroyed entire neighbourhoods. Protesters took aim at officials, including the head of the eastern-based Libyan parliament, Aguila Saleh, during the demonstration outside the Sahaba Mosque. Later in the evening, angry protesters set fire to the house of the man who was Derna mayor at the time of the flood, Abdulmenam al-Ghaithi, his office manager told Reuters.

When hydrologist Abdul Wanis Ashour began researching the system of dams protecting the eastern Libya port town of Derna 17 years ago, the peril facing residents was already no secret, he said. "When I gathered the data, I found a number of problems in the Derna Valley: in the cracks present in the dams, the amount of rainfall and repeated floods," he told Reuters. "I found also a number of reports warning of a disaster taking place in the Derna Valley basin if the dams were not maintained."

(Reuters) -

After pummelling other Mediterranean countries, the powerful Storm Daniel swept into Libya at the weekend, unleashing record amounts of rain as it made landfall. The rain dumped by the storm filled a normally dry riverbed, or wadi, in the hills south of Derna. The head of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said on Thursday that casualties could have been avoided if the divided country, shattered by some 12 years of conflict and chaos, had a functional weather service able to issue warnings.

Libyans from across the fragmented country have driven through old front lines regardless of bitter enmities to deliver aid to flood-stricken Derna this week, putting aside years of conflict between their divided leaders. Inside Derna, where a torrent washed away whole districts on Sunday night after two dams collapsed under storm floods, volunteers from Misrata, Tripoli and Benghazi were distributing clothes and food packages on Wednesday and Thursday. Thousands were killed in the disaster and many thousands more are missing, though estimates of the toll have varied widely, and large number...