Libya floods: 74 Egyptian workers killed, leaving an entire village grieving

A village in Egypt mourned the loss of 74 of its residents who tragically died in the floods in Libya while working in the country.

Videos on social media showed a convoy of yellow ambulances carrying the bodies of the village's dead, and surrounded by distraught family members, arriving in the tiny village in the Beni Suef governorate, 70 miles south of Cairo.

The village of al-Sharif sits around 560 miles away from Derna, the Libyan coastal city devastated by floods caused by Storm Daniel.

According to local reports, such is the loss felt by the community that almost every house in the village held mourning ceremonies.

In Egypt’s rural villages, different families are often interrelated through marriage or are so close that they consider each other as good as related.  

لحظة وصول جثامين 74 فقيداً مصرياً في إعصار #دانيال بليبيا إلى قرية الشريف، مركز ببا في محافظة #بني_سويف#الشرق_مصر #الشرق_للأخبار pic.twitter.com/FgOMmGugaA

— الشرق للأخبار - مصر (@AsharqNewsEGY) September 13, 2023

The Al-Dabaa family, one of the largest in the village, was in a particularly potent state of shock and grief, as they mourned the loss of 16 members of their family.

With employment opportunities at home scant and wages often nowhere near enough to meet basic needs, many of the Egyptians who died in the floods in Libya had gone to the country illegally.

All of the 74 residents who died were men aged between 18-30.

One farmer in the village told of how he had helped raise the money for his three sons, all in their 20s, to go to Libya illegally for work opportunities. All three were killed in the floods.

“Now I wish I had never done it,” he tearfully told the BBC.

The farmer’s story is repeated throughout the village, with many parents mourning sons, wives mourning husbands, children mourning fathers and sisters mourning brothers.

Though the loss of life is paramount,  the future of so many residents in the village is now far from certain given Egypt's grim economic situation.

Beni Suef, the governorate where al-Sharif is located, is one of Egypt’s most deprived, with 60% living in poverty.

The 74 young men from al-Sharif are not the only Egyptians to have died in Libya’s floods.

On Tuesday, Libyan authorities confirmed the deaths of 145 Egyptian nationals, but an as yet unknown number remain missing.