Migrants in Libya shot as fighting rages between rivals
TRIPOLI: Migrants and refugees have been shot and wounded in a detention centre south of Tripoli as Libyan fighters battle for control of the capital, Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said Friday.
Clashes between Libya’s Tripoli-based unity government forces and fighters of military commander Khalifa Haftar have raged since April 4, when the strongman launched an assault to seize the capital.
The UN and international NGOs have warned that thousands of migrants and refugees who fled violence at home and are now trapped in Libyan detention centres are facing enormous dangers and must be evacuated.
On Wednesday the UN refugee agency UNHCR said it had evacuated 325 asylum seekers from the Qasr Bin Ghashir detention centre a day after an attack against refugees and migrants. It was not clear who carried out the assault.
“While there were no bullet wounds, 12 refugees endured physical attacks that required hospital treatment,” a statement said.
But on Friday MSF said “an analysis of existing photographic and video evidence by MSF medical doctors concluded that injuries shown are consistent with gunshot wounds”.
“These observations are further supported by numerous accounts from refugees and migrants who witnessed the event and reported on being brutally and indiscriminately attacked with the use of fire arms,” it said.
MSF published video footage showing several people bleeding from what appeared to be bullet holes in limbs and other parts of their bodies.
“To say we were outraged is an understatement,” MSF head of emergency programmes Karline Kleijer was quoted as saying in the statement.
“Mere condemnation of the violence against migrants and refugees is meaningless unless immediate action is taken by the international community to evacuate the remaining thousands.”
MSF said that over 700 unarmed men, women and children were trapped in the Qasr Bin Ghashir detention centre.
The watchdog said residents of the centre have been moved to another detention camp west of Tripoli on Wednesday and Thursday.
“While they are no longer in the direct vicinity of fighting, people are still subjected to dangerous and degrading conditions and rapidly changing conflict dynamics that continue to pose a threat to all those locked up in detention centres in and around Tripoli,” it warned.
Human Rights Watch has also sounded the alarm.
It quoted two migrants from a detention centre in an eastern suburb of Tripoli and a third one who was detained in the centre of the capital as saying armed men have forced them to work for them.
In one instance two detainees said they were ordered to repair military vehicles and “to load, unload, and clean weapons”, including machine guns, HRW said. — AFP KHARTOUM: Sudanese student Alaa Salah emerged as a singing symbol of the protest movement that toppled leader Omar alBashir, and now insists she will keep demonstrating until civilian rule is secured.
The 22-year-old engineering and architecture undergraduate shot to prominence when a picture of her in a white robe leading chanting crowds from atop a car in Khartoum went viral on social media.
Shortly after on April 11 the army ousted long-time leader Bashir, but since then a 10member military council has resisted calls to handover power.
Every evening Salah heads down to join the crowds still camped out around the army headquarters in the capital — leading thousands of demonstrators in singing out their calls for change.
“We are staying at the protest site until all our demands are met,” Salah said in an interview with AFP.
“We want a democratic civilian government and that all corrupt figures of the previous regime be prosecuted.”
Like many gathered outside the military complex she insists “we don’t want just words, we want actions”.
Portraits of Salah — dubbed ‘Kandaka’ or Nubian queen online — have appeared on murals across Khartoum in the wake of Bashir’s fall. The iconic image captured her wearing the traditional flowing white headscarf and skirt, her golden full-moon earrings reflecting in the fading sunset.
The outfit is a nod to the lead role played by women in the protests that ended three decades of iron-fisted rule by the veteran leader. “I wore this attire as part of an initiative to support the revolution,” she says.
Symbolic too is the chant that she recites to raise the spirits of the demonstrators. The words are those of a well-known Sudanese poem that says “a bullet does not kill, what kills is the people’s silence” — a sentiment she says aptly captures Sudan’s new spirit of defiance. — AFP