Libyan authorities this week found nearly 50 bodies in two mass graves in the country's southeastern desert, Reuters reported, citing officials earlier today. The agency notes that this is another tragedy related to people trying to reach Europe through the chaotic North African country, BTA reports.
The first mass grave with 19 bodies was discovered on Friday in a farm in the southeastern city of Kufra, the security directorate said in a statement, adding that authorities have taken the bodies for autopsy. Authorities posted photos on their Facebook page showing police and medics digging through the sand and pulling out bodies wrapped in blankets.
The charity Al Abrin, which helps migrants in eastern and southern Libya, said some of them had apparently been shot before being buried in the mass grave.
According to Mohammed al-Fadel, head of the security service in Kufra, a separate mass grave containing at least 30 bodies was discovered after a specialized operation at a human trafficking center. Survivors said nearly 70 people were buried in the grave, he added. Authorities are still inspecting and searching the center.
Mass graves of migrants are not uncommon in Libya. Last year, authorities found the bodies of at least 65 migrants in the Al-Shuwayrif area, 350 kilometers south of the capital Tripoli, the AP noted.
Libya is a major transit route for migrants from Africa and the Middle East trying to reach Europe. The country has been engulfed in chaos since the NATO-backed uprising that toppled longtime leader Muammar Gaddafi in 2011. For much of the past decade, the country has been ruled by rival governments in eastern and western Libya, each backed by a large number of militias and foreign governments. Human traffickers exploit this instability by smuggling migrants across the country’s borders with Chad, Niger, Sudan, Egypt, Algeria and Tunisia.
Once ashore, traffickers load desperate migrants seeking a better life in Europe onto poorly equipped rubber dinghies and other vessels to undertake the perilous journeys across the Central Mediterranean.
Human rights groups and UN agencies have documented systematic abuses of migrants in Libya for years, including forced labor, beatings, rape and torture. The abuses are often accompanied by attempts to extort money from their families before the migrants are allowed to leave Libya on the smugglers’ boats. According to human rights activists and UN experts, those captured and returned to Libya, including women and children, are being held in government-run detention centers, where they are also subjected to abuse, the AP notes.