Some 1,000 people have been killed since Libyan strongman Khalifa Haftar launched a push three months ago to capture Tripoli, the UN said Friday, including 53 detained migrants who died in a devastating air strike.
Haftar’s self-styled Libyan National Army, which holdseastern Libya and much of the country’s south, launched an offensive in earlyApril to wrestle the capital from forces loyal to the UN-recognised Governmentof National Accord (GNA).
Air strikes and ground fighting have since left nearly 1,000people dead and some 5,000 wounded, the UN’s World Health Organization said,without specifying the breakdown between civilians and fighters.
The fighting has forced more than 100,000 people to fleetheir homes in a country mired by a bloody power struggle between militiassince a NATO-backed uprising that toppled and killed dictator Moamer Kadhafi in2011.
Among the dead are 53 migrants killed Tuesday night in anair raid on a detention centre in the Tripoli suburb of Tajoura, held by theGNA, which accused Haftar’s forces of carrying out the strike.
A Geneva-based spokesman for the International Organizationfor Migration said six children were among the migrants killed.Joel Millman said that “350 migrants,including 20 women and four children” were still detained at the centre,one of five air hangers hit in the raid.