The mayor of Libya’s eastern city of Derna was detained along with other officials on suspicion of mismanagement and negligence over the collapse of dams that flooded the city two weeks ago. The attorney general’s office, based in the capital Tripoli, said it had issued orders to detain eight local officials over the collapse of dams in a storm, which unleashed the torrent that swept neighborhoods into the sea, killing thousands. Those detained included the mayor and an official in charge of water resources, it said, without identifying them. Angry residents have blamed the authorities for the collapse of the dams, which had been built to hold back the flow into the seasonal riverbed running through the city. A 2007 contract to repair the dams was never completed amid civil war that began with the NATO-backed uprising that toppled Muammar Gaddafi in 2011. Derna was controlled until 2019 by fighters from a series of groups including Islamic State.
SOURCE: VOA