TRIPOLI: The bodies of 20 migrants who got lost in the Libyan desert have been found, according to rescuers, who presume the group died of thirst.
The bodies were discovered by a truck driver travelling through the desert and were recovered on Tuesday about 320 kilometers (198 miles) southwest of Kufra and 120km (74 miles) from the border with Chad.
“The driver got lost and we believe the group died in the desert about 14 days ago since the last call on a mobile phone there was on June 13,” Kufra ambulance chief Ibrahim Belhasan said to media on Wednesday.
The sparsely populated region regularly sees summer temperatures above 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit).
The ambulance service published a video on Facebook showing decomposing bodies in the desert sand near a pick-up truck.
Two of the bodies were Libyans and the others were believed to be migrants from Chad crossing into Libya, Belhasan said.
Since the 2011 NATO-backed uprising that removed and killed longtime leader Muammar Gaddafi, Libya has emerged as the dominant transit point for people fleeing war and poverty in Africa and parts of the Middle East, hoping for a better life in Europe via the dangerous route across the desert and over the Mediterranean.
But many die en route, including in the harsh Sahara desert. According to the International Organization for Migration, at least 1,500 refugees have drowned in numerous boat mishaps and shipwrecks in the Central Mediterranean route last year.
Meanwhile, UN investigators said Wednesday that migrants detained in Libya face horrific abuse, with women especially facing sexual violence, and often forced to submit to rape in exchange for food.
In a fresh report, the Independent Fact-Finding Mission on Libya reiterated that the worst crimes under international law were likely being committed in the war-ravaged country, with migrant women suffering some of the worst abuse.
“The mission has reasonable grounds to believe that the crimes against humanity of murder, torture, imprisonment, rape, enforced disappearance and other inhumane acts have been committed in several places of detention in Libya since 2016,” it said.
Migrants are routinely detained by authorities, human traffickers and others in Libya — a key departure point for tens of thousands of people mainly from sub-Saharan Africa hoping to reach Europe.
Human traffickers have profited from the chaos that has raged since the 2011 toppling and killing of Libyan dictator Moamer Kadhafi.
Talks between rival Libyan governments are being held in Geneva this week over the rules for long-awaited elections, with an aim to end the chaos.
The fact-finding mission report, to be presented to the UN Human Rights Council next week, said it had gathered broad evidence of “the systematic use of prolonged arbitrary detention” of migrants in Libya. –Agencies
