'An unimaginable scene': Survivors describe Libya floods

The first sign that something was wrong was the sound of the dogs barking.

It was 2.30am and dark outside. When Husam Abdelgawi, a 31-year-old accountant in the eastern Libyan city of Derna, got up and went sleepily downstairs to check on them, he felt water under his feet.

Husam opened the front door of the house he shared with his younger brother, Ibrahim. More water flooded in, pulling the door off of its hinges.

The brothers ran to the back door, where they were met by a "ghastly, unimaginable scene, worse than death itself to witness", Husam said, in a phone interview from the city of Al-Qubbah. read more