Tripoli floods: heavy rain submerges cars, homes and hospitals in Libya's capital

Heavy rain flooded Libya's capital Tripoli on Tuesday 13 October 2026, submerging cars, trapping people inside buildings and sending water into hospitals, Al Jazeera reported. Footage from the city showed residents calling for help, and in one clip a security officer carried a man with a disability to safety.

At least one person has died. Jumhouria Bank said one of its employees was electrocuted as he entered the bank's Tripoli headquarters, where floodwater had covered utility boxes, The New Arab reported. No wider casualty figure had been given by Libyan authorities in the reports we read.

What happened in Tripoli

• Roads: motorists were filmed climbing out of cars as they filled with water. Security forces closed the capital's ring road.
• Hospitals: videos and images shared online showed water running through the corridors of the city's central hospital, The New Arab said, noting the footage had not been verified. Al Jazeera's report also said hospitals were inundated.
• Power: the General Electricity Company cut electricity in some districts to reduce the risk of electrocution.
• Clean-up: by Tuesday morning, municipal trucks and road crews were clearing mud and debris from the main streets, and the government ordered public services to begin urgent work to drain the water.

The warning came the night before

Libya's National Meteorological Centre had forecast heavy rain across the whole north of the country from Monday evening and warned people living near wadis and in valleys to take care, according to The New Arab. Local authorities clean drains and manholes every summer before the rainy season, but sand blown in from the desert often blocks them again, and the capital's streets still flood regularly.

Why Libya's floods are watched closely

The country is still haunted by Storm Daniel in September 2023, when two dams collapsed above the eastern city of Derna and at least 5,100 people were reported dead within days, PBS NewsHour reported at the time. Tuesday's flooding in the west is on a very different scale, but it again exposed how poorly the drainage in Libyan cities copes with a single night of heavy rain. Western Libya also flooded in late September, when rain cut power and water in Mizda, Bani Walid and Nasmah south of Tripoli, Arab News reported from AFP.

We will update this story if Libyan authorities give casualty or damage figures. For more from around the world, see our world news desk.