Bridges, housing, a brand new hospital: the reconstruction of Derna, a coastal city in Libya almost wiped out in 2023 by Cyclone Daniel , is progressing rapidly even though the inhabitants remain deeply traumatized.
Asmaa Algzhiri, 40, who works in the Gulf and regularly returns to her hometown, has seen it reborn over the months.
But like many families, she is unable to mourn her aunt and nephews, who died in the tragedy, and not only them: "Derna is a very close-knit town: even the neighbors are part of your family. "
Buildings gutted as if after a bombing, bodies buried under rubble, cars with their passengers floating in a raging sea, the images are still in everyone's minds.
On the night of September 10-11, torrential downpours caused two aging dams upstream of Derna (east) to burst, releasing millions of cubic meters of water into the center of this city of 120,000 inhabitants, which was submerged by waves up to seven meters high.
More than 4,000 people perished, according to the figures from that time, thousands more — more than 10,000 according to some estimates — were reported missing, and 40,000 inhabitants were left homeless.
"Work everywhere"
Nearly three years later, an AFP team visited the 600-bed hospital under construction, saw a desalination plant, dozens of renovated schools, the new university, the football stadium, and a new 6.5 km coastal promenade protected from the elements. The iconic Al-Sahaba mosque has also been rebuilt exactly as it was.
Adel Bokhsam, the local head of the Reconstruction Fund established in early 2024, boasts of an 80% completion rate for projects in the city. He also cites 3,500 apartments, 2,500 of which have already been delivered to those affected by the disaster, and nine bridges, four of which span the river and have become promenades.
Even the neighborhoods spared by Daniel received a fresh coat of paint, streetlights and sidewalks.
For Abdulhamid Shahata, a 31-year-old Egyptian house painter, these jobs represent an "opportunity" : "There is work everywhere, only the lazy and the crazy can't find it ," says this father of four.
Ashraf Al-Targui, 30, has mixed feelings after losing his entire family on his uncle's side. The floods are "both a tragedy and a gift from God who has given us a new city ," says this construction site supervisor who "would have preferred to lose his home rather than his loved ones . "
He finds comfort in seeing the new green spaces and children's playgrounds, "really important" for the morale of the residents.
Beyond the concrete, Asmaa Algzhiri would also like the authorities to focus "more on mental health. Because even if people work and continue their daily lives, everyone remains traumatized . "
"New beginning"
A cradle of Islamic culture, rebellious against the authority of Muammar Gaddafi, Derna had become, after the 2011 uprising against the autocrat and his death, a stronghold of Al-Qaeda and the jihadist group Islamic State.
In 2018, the troops of the powerful Marshal Khalifa Haftar, embarking on a strategy of conquering the East, took the city at the cost of bloody battles.
Today, the Haftar family holds this region as well as southern Libya, where most of the oil-rich fields and terminals are located, and controls in Benghazi an executive parallel to the government in Tripoli (west), which is recognized by the UN.
In the aftermath of the cyclone, the scale of the disaster revealed an abandonment of infrastructure, particularly dams dating back to the 1970s. Residents, angry at local administrators accused of corruption, burned down the house of the mayor, nephew of the head of Parliament linked to Haftar.
This is a wake-up call for the clan, which six months later creates an emergency fund with $2 billion, placed under the leadership of one of the marshal's sons, Belgacem Haftar, determined to make Derna a showcase of the management capabilities of the powerful eastern clan.
Although the city appears transformed, it remains haunted by the memory of the tragedy.
Adel Bokhsam of the Emergency Fund himself mourns the loss of about fifteen relatives, including his sister, his brother-in-law, and their four children. After the cyclone, "nobody thought we could still live here," he says, his voice filled with emotion.
But participating in the titanic reconstruction project represented "a new beginning" for this 54-year-old engineer: "when I am immersed in my work, I tell myself that these souls did not leave for nothing . "
