Category Archives: Libya

‘Migrants never disappeared’: the lone rescue ship braving a pandemic

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As the coronavirus crisis deepens, the plight of people crossing the Mediterranean to escape conflict has been all but forgotten. A crew of German rescuers is intent on bucking that trend

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    • After a two-month break, the Alan Kurdi migrant rescue boat is heading back out into the central Mediterranean, as asylum seekers continue to attempt the desperate journey to reach Europe despite coronavirus fears.

    The boat, operated by the German NGO Sea-Eye, left the Spanish port of Castellón de la Plana on Tuesday and is expected to reach waters off the coast of Libya this weekend.

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    Libya fighting intensifies as rival forces defy UN call for global ceasefire

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    Factions step up offensives while international actors distracted by coronavirus pandemic

    Libyan armed factions have defied a UN call for a “global ceasefire” by escalating fighting across the country, with forces loyal to eastern warlord Gen Khalifa Haftar claiming to have gained control of a string of towns in the north-west.

    A spokesman for Haftar said his forces, the Libyan National Army (LNA), had also repulsed an offensive by the UN-backed government of national accord designed to capture its key airbase – the failure of which will increase the fragility of the Tripoli government and its dependence on its Turkish backers.

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    Why the ‘ignored war’ in Libya will come to haunt a blinkered west

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    Europe seems unconcerned by the chaos smouldering on its doorstep, as the five-year-old conflict becomes world’s main theatre of drone combat

    The most recent ally of Khalifa Haftar, the general who has been attacking the Libyan capital Tripoli since April last year, is Syrian president Bashar al-Assad.

    This union was formalised last week with the opening of a “Libyan embassy” in Damascus. The alarming partnership has been forged almost completely without comment. What happens with Libya no longer seems to concern anyone. It’s as though the whole conflict has ceased to exist.

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    Libya’s refugees face being cut off from aid due to coronavirus

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    Fear of being left without money or food following suspension of some NGO activities adds to already desperate situation

    Hundreds of refugees forced to leave a UN-run centre in Libya earlier this year, including survivors of the Tajoura detention centre bombing, are among those worried about being cut off from aid in the coronavirus outbreak.

    Last week, the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) announced it would suspend some activities in Libya, including work at a Tripoli community day centre and a registration centre where new arrivals can sign up for help. UNHCR will also stop making visits to detention centres until staff are given personal protective equipment, though a spokesperson said the agency will increase phone counselling and outreach to refugee community leaders. Both UNHCR and the International Organization for Migration have halted resettlement flights for refugees and migrants globally.

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    Revealed: the great European refugee scandal

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    Evidence obtained by the Guardian exposes a coordinated and unlawful EU assault on the rights of desperate people trying to cross the Mediterranean

    As night fell on 26 March 2019, two small boats made their way north across the Mediterranean. The rubber crafts were flimsy; it would be nearly impossible for those onboard to make it to Europe without help. From the north, a twin-propeller aeroplane from the European Union naval force approached. From the south, the coastguard from the country they had just fled, Libya, was coming.

    The aircraft arrived first but there would be no rescue from Europe. Instead the flight, callsign Seagull 75, radioed the Libyans telling them where to find the boats. But Libya’s would-be interceptors would need more than just the coordinates. “OK sir, my radar is not good, is not good, if you stay [over the boat] I will follow you,” said the coastguard, according to recordings of VHF marine radio picked up by a nearby ship.

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    Libya peace efforts thrown further into chaos as UN envoy quits

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    Move follows Ghassan Salamé’s failure to get nations to use their leverage to end civil war

    International efforts to broker a Libyan ceasefire have been plunged further into chaos by the unexpected resignation of Ghassan Salamé, the UN special envoy to the country.

    Salamé’s move, amid UN-led talks in Geneva, is an admission that he has been unable to persuade major powers to use their leverage to end the civil war between Khalifa Haftar, the leader of so-called Libyan National Army forces in the country’s east, and the UN-recognised government of Fayez al-Sarraj, based in the capital, Tripoli.

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    Ancient fish dinners chart Sahara’s shift from savannah to desert

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    Bones of fish eaten by humans thousands of years ago offer clue to region’s ancient climate

    The Sahara’s shift from savannah with abundant lakes to a largely arid expanse has been traced in the remains of fish eaten thousands of years ago.

    Researchers analysing material found in a rock shelter in the Acacus mountains in south-west Libya say they have found more than 17,500 animal remains dating from between 10,200 and 4,650 years ago, 80% of which are fish. About two-thirds of the fish were catfish and the rest were tilapia. The team say telltale marks on the bones reveal the fish were eaten by humans who used the shelter.

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    EU agrees to deploy warships to enforce Libya arms embargo

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    Operation to come into force as mission to save migrants and refugees from sea is wound down

    The EU has agreed to deploy warships to stop the flow of weapons into Libya, as the bloc wound down a military mission that had once rescued migrants and refugees from drowning in the Mediterranean.

    Josep Borrell, the EU’s chief diplomat, announced that 27 foreign ministers had agreed to launch a new operation with naval ships, planes and satellites in order to enforce the UN arms embargo on Libya.

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    Unexploded bombs pose rising threat to civilians in Libya

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    Rights groups and UN warn of rapidly accelerating danger as banned cluster weapons are deployed

    The threat posed by unexploded bombs is rising exponentially in wartorn Libya, experts have warned, with the use of banned cluster weapons a source of particular concern.

    The UN’s Mine Action Service (Unmas) said that even parts of the country previously cleared of explosive material had been recontaminated following a surge in fighting since April last year, when the warlord Khalifa Haftar launched a campaign to seize the capital, Tripoli.

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    Libya arms embargo is a joke, says UN envoy as ceasefire talks continue

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    Blunt assessment follows Munich meeting to try to mediate between warring sides

    The UN-backed arms embargo in Libya has become a joke and the country’s financial position is deteriorating rapidly, the UN deputy special envoy for Libya, Stephanie Williams, has said after foreign ministers met in Munich to try to enforce a ceasefire between the two warring sides.

    Since a meeting of world leaders in Berlin last month to draw up a Libyan peace plan, both sides in the civil war have ignored international appeals and turned back to their external sponsor nations for further arms and mercenary support. Last week the UN security council passed a resolution calling for enforcement of the arms embargo and a ceasefire.

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    Healing hands: the Italian surgeon treating Libya torture camp survivors

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    Prof Massimo Del Bene aids African migrants whose captors inflicted horrific injuries to extort ransom payments

    The first patient was a young Ghanaian man who had been tortured every day for more than a year in Libya by traffickers trying to extort a ransom for his release, says Prof Massimo Del Bene, head of reconstructive surgery at the San Gerardo hospital in Monza, north of Milan.

    Since then, the surgeon renowned for performing the first double hand transplant in Italy, has adapted his expertise to what he calls “torture surgery”, helping African migrants who have survived Libyan detention camps, where traffickers and criminal gangs are documented to have tortured captives to extort ransom money.

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    UN passes UK-backed resolution calling for a ceasefire in Libya

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    Proposal for multinational operation to oversee truce comes as fighting grew more complex by the day

    The UN security council has passed a resolution mandating a multinational operation to oversee a ceasefire in Libya, despite serious doubts that any of the conflict’s key players will abide by its terms.

    The UK-backed resolution, calling for a ceasefire without preconditions and an immediate end to the supply of arms to both sides, was passed by 14 votes to zero, with one abstention from Russia.

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    Libya’s bloodshed will continue unless foreign powers stop backing Khalifa Haftar | Frederic Wehrey

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    Support from the Emirates, Russia and the US is empowering the military strongman and worsening Libyans’ suffering

    In Abu Grein, on Libya’s frontline, the militiamen’s scars read like a rollcall of the wars that have roiled the country since the fall of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011. One of the fighters, a truck driver named Muhammad, removes his cap to reveal a balding pate etched with shrapnel gashes. “From Da’ish,” he says, referring to a 2016 battle he fought against Islamic State in the Libyan city of Sirte.

    Now, he says, yet another foe has captured Sirte: rebel militias under the command of a 76-year-old aspiring strongman named Khalifa Haftar. Last Sunday, these militias attacked Muhammad and his men, killing 11 of them, ignoring a shaky truce in a long-running war that started last April with a blitz on the Libyan capital by Haftar’s forces.

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    The Guardian view on Libya and foreign interference: talking peace, shipping arms | Editorial

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    The north African country’s population have suffered years of turmoil, fuelled by the meddling of outside players. The civil war may yet escalate

    Let’s all be good. This was, in essence, the conclusion of the conference in Berlin this month which aimed to at least begin the work of ending a war which has cost thousands of lives and displaced hundreds of thousands of people in Libya. Participants agreed that foreign meddling should cease and that everyone should abide by the UN arms embargo.

    Despite the desperate need for peace, there was good reason to be cynical. The host, Angela Merkel, argued publicly with the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, over what had actually been agreed. Fighting soon raged again. The UN refugee agency announced on Thursday that it is suspending all operations at a facility in Tripoli and moving refugees from the site, fearing for their safety and that of its staff and partners amid worsening conflict. The UN says that several participants in the Berlin meeting have since shipped both arms and mercenaries to Libya, blatantly violating the embargo.

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    Oil chief urges west to call out foreign meddling in Libya conflict

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    Mustafa Sanalla says country facing disaster as blockade disrupts oil production

    World powers will be complicit in the collapse of the rule of law in Libya if they do not do more to call out the countries backing those responsible for disrupting the country’s oil exports, the head of the Libyan national oil corporation has said.

    Mustafa Sanalla said too many western powers were happy to let the countries meddling in Libya sign non-intervention agreements that they had no intention of honouring.

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    Teenage boy the latest to die in Libyan refugee detention centre

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    The 16-year-old, from Eritrea, had been in the facility for more than a year and died of an unknown illness and lack of medical care

    A 16-year-old is the latest person to die in a network of Libyan detention centres where refugees and migrants are locked up indefinitely after they are returned to the war-torn north African country by the EU-funded coastguard.

    Fellow detainees in Sabaa detention centre, Tripoli, named the boy as Adal Debretsion, an Eritrean who had reportedly been locked up for more than a year. They said the teenager died on 12 January of an unknown illness and a lack of medical care.

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    Libya oil production nosedives as Haftar ignores calls to end war

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    Increasingly erratic general shows no sign of relenting despite international pressure

    Libya’s oil production and exports have almost ground to a halt as the increasingly unpredictable Gen Khalifa Haftar, the military leader in the country’s east, ignores international calls to seek a negotiated political settlement to the civil war.

    World leaders had convened in Berlin on Sunday to endorse plans to entrench, monitor and enforce a ceasefire intended as a precursor to the disarming of militias and political talks in Geneva to build a reunified government, and a fair distribution of oil revenues between the east and west of the country.

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    Libya: Sanctions threatened against countries who break arms embargo

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    Johnson says international peacekeeping force could monitor the proposed ceasefire

    World leaders seeking an enduring ceasefire in Libya have agreed at a summit to impose sanctions on those breaking an arms embargo and are considering whether to send a multinational force to the country.

    The conference in Berlin of 11 countries is aimed at bringing an end to the fighting between the UN-recognised government in Tripoli led by the prime minister, Fayez al-Sarraj, and the Libyan National Army in the country’s east led by Gen Khalifa Haftar.

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