Derna survivors search for loved ones after Libyan flooding
"When I came, I found everything — my building, my family, the whole neighborhood — under the sea. Everything disappeared," one man told NBC News.
Homes, lives and the heart of a city: The water ripped it all away.
Like so many others, construction worker Mohamad Mahmoud Ismail Al-Shalwi rushed home Monday morning to check on his extended family — but many were missing or dead.
“When I came, I found everything — my building, my family, the whole neighborhood — under the sea. Everything disappeared,” said Al-Shalwi, who is originally from Derna but lives in Benghazi, which acts as a capital for the eastern half of his divided country.
Al-Shalwi said that every minute that passes without knowing what has happened to his 12 missing family members, ages 3 months to 77 years, something inside him dies. “I can’t eat, I can’t sleep at all,” he said in a telephone interview.
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