At least 44 migrants were killed and over 130 others wounded early Wednesday when an airstrike hit a detention center near the Libyan capital, Tripoli, according to the United Nations mission in the country.
Libyan government officials described the strike as a war crime and called on the international community to investigate. A United Nations envoy said the attack “clearly could constitute a war crime.” And the European Union demanded an investigation by the United Nations, calling the strike “horrific.”
Government officials placed responsibility for the attack on the European-funded center on Gen. Khalifa Hifter, the aspiring strongman whose self-styled Libyan National Army has been trying to seize control of Tripoli since April.
Col. Khalid al-Mahjoub, a spokesman for the group, denied responsibility, though he said it had targeted an ammunition depot near the detention center in recent weeks.
“This time, we didn’t do it,” he said by telephone from the eastern city of Benghazi. Colonel al-Mahjoub accused the militia that runs the center of using migrants as human shields and even of using them to help with the fight.
Photographs and videos from the site of the attack, in Tajoura, 10 miles east of Tripoli, showed bloodstained debris and graphic images of wounded people being carried to a hospital, and one video showed five bodies lined in a row. Officials said that at least 44 people had been killed, and they expect the toll to rise.
The bombing followed repeated warnings from the United Nations and migrant advocates about the dangers posed by Libya’s escalating conflict to thousands of migrants held in squalid detention centers, often at the behest of European countries seeking to halt migration across the Mediterranean.
“Refugees and migrants are paying the heaviest price in a geopolitical power struggle,” Matthew Saltmarsh, a spokesman for the United Nation refugee agency, told the BBC on Wednesday.
At least 5,000 African migrants are being housed in detention centers across northwestern Libya, usually after being turned back in the Mediterranean by the Libyan Coast Guard as they try to cross to Europe in overcrowded ships. The United Nations estimates that about 3,000 detainees live in centers close to the front line.
The center hit on Wednesday is funded by the European Union and Italian aid agencies, and had been a particular worry. Last month, the United Nations refugee agency warned that 500 refugees detained at the center faced “unacceptable risks” after an airstrike nearby wounded two refugees.
“Today we see the tragic consequences we feared when we made that statement,” Charlie Yaxley, a spokesman for the United Nations agency, said in Geneva. “It’s key that people in detention centers are freed and evacuated.”
In a joint statement, the European Union’s diplomatic chief, Federica Mogherini, the enlargement commissioner, Johannes Hahn, and the migration commissioner, Dimitris Avramopoulos, said: “The European Union joins the call for the U.N. to carry out an immediate investigation into who perpetrated this horrific attack. Those responsible should be held to account.”
Images from the site posted to social media and verified by The New York Times showed extensive damage to the building consistent with a large explosion inside: walls blown outward, a roof collapsed inward, and blocks and debris strewn around a large area.
Photos posted to Facebook by a branch of Libya’s counter-illegal migration authority also showed gruesome injuries to several people. A live stream broadcast by the authorities showed victims being carried from the building.
The Associated Press cited witnesses who said the airstrike had hit a workshop for weapons and vehicles and an adjacent hangar where 150 detainees were housed.
Fighting in the area has intensified in the past week, after General Hifter lost a major base south of the city.
Both the unity government, led by Fayed Seraj, and General Hifter’s National Army have small air forces with older airplanes. But during a previous round of fighting in western Libya in 2014, the United Arab Emirates intervened directly with its own warplanes in support of General Hifter.
At one point, the planes dropped American munitions, to the consternation of American officials.
The possibility of powerful American weapons being used in the conflict arose again last week when unity government forces found four American-made Javelin anti-tank missiles at a base in Gheryan, 50 miles from Tripoli, after capturing the base from General Hifter’s forces.
Markings on the missile cases indicated that they had been sold in 2008 to the United Arab Emirates. In a statement on Tuesday, the Emirati minister of foreign affairs denied ownership of the missiles, hours after a senior Democratic senator warned that it could lead to a suspension of American arms sales to the United Arab Emirates.
Source : Nytimes
