An airstrike yesterday hit a detention center for migrants in the Libyan capital, killing at least 44 people and wounding more than 130, the UN mission to the war-torn country said.
The airstrike raises further concerns about the EU’s policy of partnering with Libyan militias to prevent migrants from crossing the Mediterranean, which often leaves them at the mercy of brutal traffickers or stranded in squalid detention centers near the front lines.
It could also lead to greater pressure from Western nations on Khalifa Haftar, a Libyan general whose forces launched an offensive on Tripoli in April.
Photo: Reuters
The Tripoli-based government blamed Haftar’s Libyan National Army (LNA) for the airstrike and called for the UN to establish a fact-finding committee.
A spokesman for Haftar’s forces did not immediately answer telephone calls and messages seeking comment.
Local media reported that the LNA had launched airstrikes against a militia camp near the detention center.
The airstrike targeted the detention center in Tripoli’s Tajoura neighborhood.
Libyan Ministry of Health spokesman Malek Merset posted photographs of migrants being taken away in ambulances.
Footage circulating online and said to be from inside the migrant detention center showed blood and body parts mixed with rubble and migrants’ belongings.
The airstrike hit a workshop housing weapons and vehicles, and an adjacent hangar in which about 150 migrants were being held, mostly Sudanese and Moroccans, according to two migrants who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal.
Three or four survived unharmed and about 20 were wounded, the migrants said.
The rest of the hangar detainees were killed, they said, indicating that the final death toll could be much higher.
The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Libya condemned the airstrike on the detention center, which houses a total of 616 migrants and refugees, and called for an immediate end to efforts to return migrants to Libya.
UNHCR spokesman Charlie Yaxley said that the agency had warned less than two months ago that anyone inside the Tajoura detention center was at risk of being caught in the fighting around Tripoli.
Then, an airstrike that hit nearby wounded two migrants.
The UNHCR is sending medical teams to the site after the latest airstrike, Yaxley said.
African Union Commission Chairperson Moussa Faki Mahamat also condemned the strike, calling for an independent investigation and saying that those responsible for the “horrific crime” should be held to account.
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