DERNA, Libya (AP) — The death toll from flooding that hit the eastern Libyan city of Derna reached more than 5,100 and was expected to rise further, a local health official said Wednesday, as authorities struggled to get aid to the coastal city where thousands remained missing and tens of thousands were homeless.

Aid workers who managed to reach the city, which was cut off on Sunday night when flash floods washed away most of the access roads, described devastation in Derna’s centre. Search and rescue teams combed shattered apartment buildings for bodies and retrieved the dead floating offshore in the Mediterranean Sea.

“Bodies are everywhere, inside houses, in the streets, at sea. Wherever you go, you find dead men, women, and children,” Emad al-Falah, an aid worker from Benghazi, said over the phone from Derna. “Entire families were lost.”

Mediterranean storm Daniel caused deadly flooding in many towns of eastern Libya, but the worst-hit was Derna. As the storm pounded the coast Sunday, residents said they heard loud explosions when the dams outside the city collapsed. Floodwaters washed down Wadi Derna, a river running from the mountains through the city and into the sea.

“The city of Derna was submerged by waves seven metres (23 feet) high that destroyed everything in their path,” Yann Fridez, head of the delegation of the International Committee of the Red Cross in Libya, told broadcaster France24. “The human toll is enormous.”

Derna lies on a narrow coastal plain on the Mediterranean under steep mountains running along the coast. Only two roads from the south remain usable, and they involve a long, winding route through the mountains.

Aid teams with some supplies managed to get in that way. Otherwise, local emergency workers were relying on whatever equipment they already had on hand while authorities in eastern Libya worked Wednesday to repair the faster coastal access routes. Collapsed bridges over Wadi Derna split the city centre, further hampering movement.

Ossama Ali, a spokesman for the Ambulance and Emergency Center in eastern Libya, said at least 5,100 deaths were recorded in Derna, along with around 100 others elsewhere in eastern Libya. More than 7,000 people were injured in the city, most receiving treatment in field hospitals that authorities and aid agencies set up, he told The Associated Press by phone Wednesday.

The number of deaths is likely to increase since teams are still collecting bodies from the streets, buildings and the sea, he said. At least 9,000 remain missing, but that number could drop as communications are restored, Ali said.

At least 30,000 people in Derna were displaced by the flooding, the United Nations’ (UN) International Organization for Migration said, adding that the city remained almost inaccessible for humanitarian aid workers.

The startling devastation pointed to the storm’s intensity, but also Libya’s vulnerability. The country is divided by rival governments, one in the east, the other in the west, and the result has been neglect of infrastructure in many areas.