UN Libya Envoy Says Tripoli Raid That Killed 44 May Be War Crime
Libyan Migrant Center Hit by Air Strike, Killing More Than 30
(Bloomberg) -- An attack on a Libyan detention center that killed at least 44 people may constitute a war crime, a United Nations envoy said, adding to international pressure to end a battle for the capital that’s threatening to tear apart the North African OPEC member.
Libya’s UN-backed government accused eastern commander Khalifa Haftar of ordering an overnight airstrike that hit the compound for undocumented migrants in the suburbs of the capital, Tripoli. Haftar’s Libyan National Army denied the charge and said the Tripoli-based government was to blame, the pan-Arab TV channel Al-Hadath reported.
“This attack clearly could constitute a war crime, as it killed by surprise innocent people whose dire conditions forced them to be in that shelter,” the head of the UN’s support mission in Libya, Ghassan Salame, said Wednesday in a statement.
The center in Tajoura held at least 600 refugees and migrants, including women and children, many of them Africans who’d attempted to travel to Europe. The UN Refugee Agency called for an immediate independent probe into who was responsible for the raid that left 130 other people severely injured.
If proven, the nature of the target and the death toll will likely increase calls for Haftar and his backers to return to the UN-sponsored peace process.
The raid followed a warning by Haftar’s forces that they would launch airstrikes on Tripoli targets after losing the strategic city of Gharyan to the government. That loss had dealt a blow to his months-long campaign to seize the capital and take control of the war-torn country.
Libya is divided between two rival governments and militias vying to control a country that holds Africa’s largest proven oil reserves. The conflict is rapidly turning into the latest proxy war in the Middle East, pitting rivals Egypt and the United Arab Emirates against Turkey.
The U.A.E., which supports Haftar, denied that it “owned” U.S.-made missiles found in Gharyan. In a statement late Tuesday, the Foreign Ministry said it was committed to the UN arms embargo on Libya and called on the country’s warring parties to ease tensions.
The top Democrat on the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee warned Secretary of State Michael Pompeo that if the U.A.E. had violated an arms sales agreement with the U.S., the Trump administration would be required to terminate all weapons sales to its Gulf Arab ally.
“I understand that the State Department may have begun an investigation; if not, I demand that a full investigation be done immediately,” New Jersey Senator Bob Menendez wrote in a letter posted on his website.
Hours later, State Department spokesman Morgan Ortagus said in a statement that “the United States strongly condemns the abhorrent attack” and called for all parties in Libya to “return to the political process.” But she didn’t indicate an investigation was underway or attribute blame to Haftar, who has been praised in the past by President Donald Trump.
A White House statement in April said Trump “recognized Field Marshal Haftar’s significant role in fighting terrorism and securing Libya’s oil resources.”
--With assistance from Zaid Sabah, Samer Khalil Al-Atrush and Tarek El-Tablawy.
To contact the reporters on this story: Saleh Sarrar in Dubai at ssarar@bloomberg.net;Zainab Fattah in Dubai at zfattah@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Alaa Shahine at asalha@bloomberg.net, Michael Gunn, Larry Liebert
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