By Sylvia Chebet
Africa has witnessed a series of devastating natural disasters in the year 2023, the worst being the most recent floods in Libya which has wiped off the map a quarter of Derna city's neighbourhoods.
Here are five of the deadliest weather disasters in the continent this year:
- September 10 - Libya floods
Rescuers continue to sift through mud and rubble in their search for people missing from the disastrous floods that swept the Libyan port city of Derna, killing more than 11,000 people.
The surge of water burst two upstream dams on Sunday, turning Derna into an apocalyptic wasteland with entire city blocks and untold numbers of people washed into the Mediterranean.
A quarter of the city’s neighborhoods was wiped off the map as the disastrous floods ravaged the country. It is estimated that 100,000 people lived in Derna.
Torrential rains swept several other cities including, Benghazi, Al-Bayda, Al-Marj, and Soussa.
The floods caused by Storm Daniel were unprecedented in the Maghreb region and even globally in the 21st century.
The United Nations has launched an appeal for more than $71 million to assist hundreds of thousands in need, warning that the "extent of the problem" remains unclear.
"The water was rising with us until we got to the fourth floor, the water was up to the second floor," the unidentified man said from his hospital bed, in a testimony published by the Benghazi Medical Center.
"We could hear screams. From the window, I saw cars and bodies being carried away by the water. It lasted an hour or an hour and a half - but for us, it felt like a year."
- September 8 - Morocco earthquake
The flash floods in Libya came just as Morocco was reeling from a devastating earthquake that killed 2,946 people and destroyed more than 50,000 homes two days earlier.
The magnitude 7 quake that struck on September 8 was the strongest to hit the country in a century, according to Morocco National Geophysical Institute.
- July/August - Algeria Wildfires
Wildfires raged across Algeria during a blistering heatwave and killed more than 34 people including 10 soldiers and forced mass evacuations.
As temperatures hit 48 degrees Celsius (118 Fahrenheit) in parts of the North African country, it recorded 97 blazes across 16 provinces, fanned by strong winds.
The fires raged through residential areas forcing the interior ministry to evacuate 1,500 people from the Bejaia, Bouira and Jijel provinces east of the capital Algiers.
Images shared by local media showed fields and forests that had caught fire in the area as well as charred vehicles and storefronts destroyed by the flames.
Fires regularly rage through forests and fields in Algeria in summer, and this year's have been exacerbated by a heatwave that has seen several Mediterranean countries break temperature records.
In neighbouring Tunisia, temperatures soared to nearly 50 degrees Celsius. Fires raged in a Tunisian pine forest near the border with Algeria with authorities stating that 470 hectares of forest was burned.
At least 300 people were evacuated by sea and by land from the village of Melloula, according to the national guard.
- March 11 - Mozambique cyclone
Cyclone Freddy, which made landfall in Mozambique as a Category 2 storm with 110 mph winds, caused floods that killed 1,434 people.
Freddy was reportedly the deadliest tropical cyclone on record for Africa, surpassing Cyclone Idai of 2019.
It left 679 dead and 537 people missing in Malawi, with additional fatalities in Madagascar (17), Mozambique (198), Zimbabwe (2), and Mauritius (1). Freddy is now the second-deadliest tropical cyclone in the entire Southern Hemisphere, after an unnamed 1973 cyclone in Indonesia which records indicate killed 1,650 people.
April/May - DR Congo and Rwanda Floods
Severe flooding killed at least 574 people and displaced thousands as heavy rains pounded the two neighbouring nations in late April and early May. Thousands more went missing and were presumed dead.
Climate change is increasing the odds of extreme rainfall in the continent and across the world.
The EU's climate monitoring service Copernicus said rising global sea surface temperatures were driving record levels of heat across the globe, with 2023 likely to be the warmest in human history.
