Migrant detention centre hit by air strike in Libya: 40 killed

An airstrike hit a detention centre for mainly African migrants in a suburb of Tripoli, killing at least 40 people and wounding 80.

Malek Mersek, spokesman for state emergency medical services, said 40 people had been killed and 80 wounded in the strike on the detention centre in the Tajoura suburb located next to a military camp.

Osama Ali, a spokesman for the emergency services, told AFP that 120 migrants had been in a hangar which was directly hit by the strike in Tajoura. He added that more people may have been killed because the death toll so far was “a preliminary assessment”.

The Tripoli-based government said in a statement that dozens of people had been killed and wounded in an airstrike blamed on the “war criminal Khalifa Haftar.” A spokesman for Haftar forces did not immediately answer phone calls and messages seeking comment.

The UN refugee agency in Libya condemned the airstrike on the detention centre. 

Photos showed African migrants undergoing surgery in a hospital after the strike. Others lay on beds, some covered in dust or with limbs bandaged.

It is the highest publicly reported toll of an airstrike or shelling since eastern forces loyal to Khalifa Haftar launched their offensive around three months ago to take the capital held by the internationally recognised government.

Thousands of migrants are held in government-run detention centres in western Libya in what human rights groups and the United Nations say are often inhuman conditions.

Tajoura, east of Tripoli’s centre, is home to several military camps of forces allied to Libya’s internationally recognised government, which have been targeted by airstrikes for weeks.

On Monday, Haftar’s Libyan National Army (LNA), which is allied to a parallel government, said it would start heavy airstrikes on targets in Tripoli after “traditional means” of war had been exhausted.