Thousands of people were killed and over 10,000 more missing after floods, triggered by Mediterranean storm Daniel, hit eastern Libya on Sunday.

At least 5,300 people are feared dead, said the eastern-based Interior Ministry on Tuesday, as emergency workers uncovered more than 1,500 bodies in the wreckage of Libya's eastern city of Derna on the same day.

Mohamed Masoud, head of the Information Office of the eastern-based House of Representatives, the parliament, told Xinhua that most of the victims were from Derna, some 1,300 km east of the capital Tripoli.

Meanwhile, Tamer Ramadan, Libyan envoy representing the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, told a UN meeting on Tuesday that he believed there were still at least 10,000 people unaccounted for in the flood-hit areas.

The catastrophic event was triggered by a Mediterranean storm that made landfall in eastern Libya on Sunday, resulting in widespread flooding and causing extensive damage to infrastructure along its path.

Abdul-Hamed Dbeibah, the prime minister of Libya's Tripoli-based Government of National Unity, on Tuesday urged the country's political parties to unite to help deal with the aftermath of the deadly floods that hit eastern Libya on Sunday.

xinhua