A collapsed building at the port city of Derna, eastern Libya, 14 September 2023, in the wake of Storm Daniel and the collapse of two dams that caused devastating floods and swept away entire neighborhoods. The Libyan Red Crescent reported that the floods caused in the country' northeast by storm Daniel on 10 September, have left over ten thousand dead and thousands more were reported as missing. EPA-EFE/STRINGER 
"Priority areas are shelter, food, key primary medical care because of the worry of cholera, the worry of lack of clean water," Martin Griffiths told a U.N. briefing in Geneva.
He said the U.N. humanitarian office had sent a disaster coordination team of 15 people to Libya who had been redeployed from Morocco, which suffered an earthquake last week.
Swathes of Derna, the centrepoint of the destruction in the country's east, were obliterated by flooding on Sunday night, bringing down whole buildings while families were asleep.
Griffiths said that a suggestion by the mayor of Derna to create a maritime corridor to deliver aid could be a viable option given that the city is on the Mediterranean Sea.
"You still keep coming in from the land, you're finding the people who are fleeing south, fleeing south from Derna, towards aid, away from the cities, so you need to support them as well," he said.
"But certainly, adding the maritime option makes complete sense."
(Reporting by Gabrielle Tétrault-Farber and Emma Farge, Editing by Angus MacSwan)