Death toll from floods in the Libyan city of Derna has risen to 6,000 people with thousands more still missing, according to an official of the unity government official
The toll is expected to increase significantly and may even double, a minister in the regional administration said on Wednesday, after the city was hit by catastrophic floods.
The "sea is constantly dumping dozens of bodies", Hichem Abu Chkiouat, minister of civil aviation in the administration that runs eastern Libya, told Reuters,
He said that reconstruction would cost billions of dollars.
Some 10,000 people were still missing, according to the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.
The city of Derna, a 300-kilometre (190 mile) drive east of Benghazi, is ringed by hills and bisected by what is normally a dry riverbed in summer, but which became a raging torrent of mud-brown water that also swept away several major bridges.
Derna was home to about 100,000 people, and many of its multi-storey buildings on the banks of the riverbed collapsed, with people, their homes and cars vanishing in the raging waters.
Several nations offered urgent aid and rescue teams to help the North African country that has been overwhelmed by what one UN official called "a calamity of epic proportions."
Libya is divided between two rival governments - the UN-brokered, internationally recognised administration based in Tripoli, and a separate administration in the disaster-hit east.
Rescue teams from Turkey have arrived in eastern Libya, according to authorities.
