GENEVA: The EU’s policy of helping the Libyan authorities intercept migrants in the Mediterranean and return them to “horrific” prisons in Libya is “inhuman,” the UN said Tuesday.
“The suffering of migrants detained in Libya is an outrage to the conscience of humanity,” the UN human rights chief Zeid Ra’ad Al-Hussein said in a statement.
“The European Union’s policy of assisting the Libyan Coast Guard to intercept and return migrants in the Mediterranean (is) inhuman,” he said.
Chaos-ridden Libya has long been a major transit hub for migrants trying to reach Europe, and many refugees and migrants have fallen prey to serious abuse there at the hands of human traffickers and others.
Zeid warned Tuesday that “the detention system for migrants in Libya is broken beyond repair.”
“The international community cannot continue to turn a blind eye to the unimaginable horrors endured by migrants in Libya, and pretend that the situation can be remedied only by improving conditions in detention.”
Zeid’s comments came after ministers from 13 European and African countries on Monday pledged steps aimed at easing the migrant crisis around the Mediterranean, vowing especially to help improve conditions for migrants held in Libya.
At a meeting in Bern of the contact group on the crisis along the so-called Central Mediterranean migration route, the ministers also reiterated a pledge to strengthen Libya’s coast guard.
Italy, with the support of the EU, has since the summer been training the Libyan coast guard to intercept boat migrants as part of a controversial deal that has sent migrant arrivals to Italy down nearly 70 percent since July.
The UN rights office criticized European countries for ignoring warnings that the deal could condemn more migrants to detention, exposing them to torture, rape, forced labor and extortion.
“Those detained have no possibility to challenge the legality of their detention, and no access to legal aid,” it said.
Zeid called for the decriminalization of irregular migration, insisting that “only alternatives to detention can save migrants’ lives and physical security, preserve their dignity and protect them from further atrocities.”
According to Libya’s Department of Combatting Illegal Migration (DCIM), 19,900 people were being held in facilities under its control in early November, up from about 7,000 in mid-September.
The huge hike came after authorities detained thousands of migrants previously held by smugglers in the Libya’s people-trafficking hub Sabratha, to the west of Tripoli.
“The increasing interventions of the EU and its member states have done nothing so far to reduce the level of abuses suffered by migrants,” Zeid said, adding that instead there appeared to be “a fast deterioration in their situation in Libya.”
He said staff members had visited four DCIM facilities earlier this month and were “shocked” by what they saw.
There were “thousands of emaciated and traumatized men, women and children piled on top of each other, locked up in hangars with no access to the most basic necessities, and stripped of their human dignity,” he said.
Migrants, including children, described horrific beatings by guards at detention centers, while many women said they faced rape and other sexual violence at the hands of smugglers and guards.
One woman told UN staff she was gang-raped by three men, including a DCIM guard, while another woman said four armed men gang-raped her during her journey, when she was pregnant.
“I bled profusely, and I think I lost the baby. I haven’t seen a doctor yet,” she said.
The UN urged Libyan authorities to take concrete steps to halt violations and abuses in the detention centers, and to stop detaining migrants.
“We cannot be a silent witness to modern-day slavery, rape and other sexual violence, and unlawful killings in the name of managing migration and preventing desperate and traumatized people from reaching Europe’s shores,” Zeid said.
EU-Libya cooperation to stem migrant flow ‘inhuman,’ says UN
EU-Libya cooperation to stem migrant flow ‘inhuman,’ says UN
Turkiye man kills seven before taking his own life
The man, who was found dead in his car shortly after the shooting, is also accused of wounding two other family members, one of them seriously, the Istanbul governor’s office said in a statement.
The authorities, who had put the death toll at four on Sunday evening, announced on Monday the discovery near a lake on Istanbul’s European shore of the bodies of the killer’s wife and son, as well as the lifeless body of his mother-in-law.
According to the Small Arms Survey (SAS), a Swiss research program, over 13.2 million firearms are in circulation in Turkiye, most of them illegally, for a population of around 85 million.
2 Palestinians killed in Israeli raid in West Bank: PA
- The official Palestinian news agency Wafa said Israeli forces entered the village on Sunday night
Yabad: The Palestinian Authority said two Palestinians, including a teenage boy, were killed during an Israeli raid in the occupied West Bank village of Yabad.
The official Palestinian news agency Wafa said Israeli forces entered the village on Sunday night, leading to clashes during which soldiers shot dead two Palestinians.
The two dead were identified by the Palestinian health ministry as Muhammad Rabie Hamarsheh, 13, and Ahmad Mahmud Zaid, 20.
“Overnight, during an IDF (Israeli army) counterterrorism activity in the area of Yabad, two terrorists hurled explosives at IDF soldiers. The soldiers responded with fire and hits were identified,” an Israeli military source told AFP.
Last week, the Israeli army launched several raids in the West Bank city of Jenin, killing nine people, most of them Palestinian militants.
Violence in the West Bank has soared since the war in Gaza erupted on October 7 last year after Hamas’s attack on Israel.
Israeli troops or settlers have killed at least 777 Palestinians in the West Bank since the start of the Gaza war, according to the Ramallah-based health ministry.
Palestinian attacks on Israelis have also killed at least 24 people in the West Bank in the same period, according to Israeli official figures.
Israel has occupied the West Bank since 1967.
Israel says hit Hezbollah command center in deadly weekend strike
- The strike hit a residential building in the heart of Beirut before dawn Saturday
- Since September 23, Israel has intensified its Lebanon air campaign
JERUSALEM: The Israeli army on Monday said it had struck a Hezbollah command center in the downtown Beirut neighborhood of Basta in a deadly air strike at the weekend.
“The IDF (Israeli military) struck a Hezbollah command center,” the army said regarding the strike that the Lebanese health ministry said killed 29 people and wounded 67 on Saturday.
The strike hit a residential building in the heart of Beirut before dawn Saturday, leaving a large crater, AFP journalists at the scene reported.
A senior Lebanese security source said that “a high-ranking Hezbollah officer was targeted” in the strike, without confirming whether or not the official had been killed.
Hezbollah official Amin Cherri said no leader of the Lebanese movement was targeted in Basta.
Since September 23, Israel has intensified its Lebanon air campaign, later sending in ground troops against Hezbollah in southern Lebanon.
The war followed nearly a year of limited exchanges of fire initiated by Hezbollah in support of its ally Hamas after the Palestinian group’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, which sparked the Gaza war.
The conflict has killed at least 3,754 people in Lebanon since October 2023, according to the health ministry, most of them since September this year.
On the Israeli side, authorities say at least 82 soldiers and 47 civilians have been killed.
HRW says Israel strike that killed 3 Lebanon journalists ‘apparent war crime’
BEIRUT: Human Rights Watch said on Monday an Israeli air strike that killed three journalists in Lebanon last month was an “apparent war crime” and used a bomb equipped with a US-made guidance kit.
The October 25 strike hit a tourism complex in the Druze-majority south Lebanon town of Hasbaya where more than a dozen journalists working for Lebanese and Arab media outlets were sleeping.
The Israeli army has said it targeted Hezbollah militants and that the strike was “under review.”
HRW said the strike, relatively far from the Israel-Hezbollah war’s main flashpoints, “was most likely a deliberate attack on civilians and an apparent war crime.”
“Information Human Rights Watch reviewed indicates that the Israeli military knew or should have known that journalists were staying in the area and in the targeted building,” the watchdog said in a statement.
HRW “found no evidence of fighting, military forces, or military activity in the immediate area at the time of the attack,” it added.
The strike killed cameraman Ghassan Najjar and broadcast engineer Mohammad Reda from pro-Iran, Beirut-based broadcaster Al-Mayadeen and video journalist Wissam Qassem from Hezbollah’s Al-Manar television.
The watchdog said it verified images of Najjar’s casket wrapped in a Hezbollah flag and buried in a cemetery alongside fighters from the militant group.
But a spokesperson for the militant group said he “had no involvement whatsoever in any military activities.”
HRW said the bomb dropped by Israeli forces was equipped with a United States-produced Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) guidance kit.
The JDAM is “affixed to air-dropped bombs and allows them to be guided to a target by using satellite coordinates,” the statement said.
It said remnants from the site were consistent with a JDAM kit “assembled and sold by the US company Boeing.”
One remnant “bore a numerical code identifying it as having been manufactured by Woodard, a US company that makes components for guidance systems on munitions,” it added.
The watchdog said it contacted Boeing and Woodard but received no response.
In October last year, Reuters journalist Issam Abdallah was killed by Israeli shellfire while he was covering southern Lebanon, and six other journalists were wounded, including AFP’s Dylan Collins and Christina Assi, who had to have her right leg amputated.
In November last year, Israeli bombardment killed Al-Mayadeen correspondent Farah Omar and cameraman Rabih Maamari, the channel said.
Lebanese rights groups have said five more journalists and photographers working for local media have been killed in Israeli strikes on the country’s south and Beirut’s southern suburbs.
16 survivors rescued after tourist boat sinks off Egypt’s Red Sea coast
CAIRO: Egyptian authorities rescued 16 people after a tourist boat sank off its Red Sea coast, three security sources told Reuters on Monday, as search operations continued for the remaining passengers and crew members.
The boat, Sea Story, was carrying 45 people, including 31 tourists of varying nationalities and 14 crew, on a multi-day diving trip when it went down near the coastal town of Marsa Alam, according to a statement by the Red Sea Governorate.
Governor Amr Hanafi said some survivors were rescued using a helicopter and have been taken to medical care. Efforts to locate more survivors were ongoing in coordination with the Egyptian navy and army.
The governorate said a distress call was received at 5:30 a.m. (0330 GMT) and that the boat had departed from Porto Ghalib in Marsa Alam on Sunday, with plans to return to Hurghada Marina on Nov. 29.
The Red Sea is a popular diving destination renowned for its coral reefs and marine life, key to Egypt’s vital tourism industry.