Hundreds of body bags now line the mud-caked streets of eastern Libya's Derna city, awaiting mass burials, as traumatized and grieving residents search flood-destroyed buildings for missing loved ones and bulldozers clear streets of debris and mountains of sand on Friday.

Emergency teams are also taking part in the search for the thousands still posted as missing after water from two broken dams swept the port city on Sunday, killing at least 4,000 people. The dams burst after torrential rains from Storm Daniel swelled Derna's rivers.

The enormous, tsunami-like surge of water destroyed entire city blocks and washed untold numbers of people into the Mediterranean Sea.

In one shattered home, a rescue team pumped out the water to reveal a woman's lifeless arms still clutching her dead child, an Agence France-Presse correspondent reported.

"A wave seven meters (23 feet) high wiped out buildings and washed infrastructure into the sea. Now family members are missing, dead bodies are washing back up on shore and homes are destroyed," Yann Fridez, the head of the Libya delegation of the International Committee of the Red Cross, said.

Abdelaziz Bousmya, who lives in the Chiha neighborhood which was spared by the wall of water that devastated lower-lying districts, estimates that at least a tenth of the city's population of 100,000 were killed.

"I lost my friends, my loved ones — they are all either buried under the mud or got swept out to sea by the floodwaters," the 29-year-old said.

Access to Derna remains severely hampered as roads and bridges have been destroyed and power and phone lines cut to wide areas, where at least 30,000 people are now homeless.

 WITH AFP