LIBYAN AUTHORITIES FIND NEW MASS GRAVES IN TARHUNA

Mon 16 November 2020:

A new mass grave was found in Libya’s southwestern city of Tarhuna that was recently liberated from the putschist Gen. Khalifa Haftar’s forces, the Libyan government said Sunday.

“The grave was discovered in Alrabet area, a former stronghold of Haftar’s militia in the city,” Lutfi Tawfiq, the director of the General Authority for Research and Identification of Missing Persons, told Anadolu Agency (AA), emphasizing that efforts were still underway to exhume the bodies inside the grave.

Last week, the Libyan authorities discovered five mass graves in the same area in Tarhuna where 12 bodies were exhumed.

The country’s officials claimed that Haftar’s militia and allied mercenaries have committed several war crimes and crimes against humanity in the period between April 2019 and June 2020.

On June 16, the Libyan government found 226 dead bodies in mass graves in Tarhuna and south of Tripoli.

The UN-backed government’s forces accuse the rival eastern-based army of committing mass killings in Tarhuna.

The two sides had been engaged in a deadly armed conflict for more than a year in and around Tripoli, which ended recently with the UN-backed government taking over all of western Libya after the withdrawal of the eastern-based army.

Tarhuna was once the eastern-based army’s main military operation center.

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