An airstrike hit a detention center for migrants earlyWednesday in the Libyan capital, killing at least 40 people, a health officialin the country’s UN-supported government said.
The airstrike targeting the detention center in Tripoli’sTajoura neighborhood also wounded 80 migrants, said Malek Merset, a spokesmanfor the health ministry. Merset posted photos of migrants who were being takenin ambulances to hospitals.
Footage circulating online and said to be from inside themigrant detention center showed horrific images of blood and body parts mixedwith rubble and migrants’ belongings.
The UN refugee agency in Libya condemned the airstrike onthe detention center, which houses 616 migrants and refugees.
The Tripoli-based government blamed the self-styled LibyanNational Army, led by Khalifa Hifter, for the airstrike and called for the UNsupport mission in Libya to establish a fact-finding committee to investigate.
A spokesman for Hifter forces did not immediately answerphone calls and messages seeking comment. Local media reported that LNA hadlaunched airstrikes against a militia camp near the detention center.
The LNA launched an offensive against the weak Tripoli-basedgovernment in April. Hifter’s forces control much of the country’s east andsouth but were dealt a significant blow last week when militias allied with theTripoli government reclaimed the strategic town of Gharyan, about 100kilometers (62 miles) from the capital.
Gharyan had been a key supply route for the LNA forces.
The fighting for Tripoli has threatened to plunge Libya intoanother bout of violence on the scale of the 2011 conflict that ousted longtimedictator Moammar Gadhafi and led to his death.
At least 6,000 migrants from Eritrea, Ethiopia, Somalia,Sudan and other nations are locked in dozens of detention facilities in Libyathat are run by militias accused of torture and other human rights abuses.
Most of the migrants were apprehended by EuropeanUnion-funded and -trained Libyan coast guards while trying to cross theMediterranean Sea into Europe.
The detention centers have limited food and other suppliesfor the migrants, who made often-arduous journeys at the mercy of abusivetraffickers who hold them for ransom money from families back home.
The UN refugee agency has said that more than 3,000 migrantsare in danger because they are held in detention centers close to the frontlines between Hifter’s forces and the militias allied with the Tripoligovernment. Libya became a major crossing point for migrants to Europe afterthe 2011 ouster and killing of Gadhafi, when the North African nation wasthrown into chaos, armed militias proliferated and central authority fellapart.