UN Refugee agency calls for investigation in Tripoli migrant camp attack

The United Nations has called for an independent inquiry into the bombing of a Libyan migrant detention centre that left at least 44 dead and more than 130 severely injured, describing the attack as “a war crime and odious bloody carnage”.

The detention centre east of Tripoli was housing more than 610 people when it was hit by two airstrikes. Libya’s UN-recognised Government of National Accord (GNA) and the Italian interior minister, Matteo Salvini, blamed the bombing on the air force of Khalifa Haftar.

The GNA has been defending Tripoli from an assault launched by Haftar’s Libyan National Army (LNA) on 4 April that has left hundreds of people dead.

Gen Khaled el-Mahjoub, a spokesman for the LNA, sayed it was the militia camp in the Tajoura neighbourhood that was the target. He did not deny, however, that the migrant detention centre was hit.