By Libya Herald reporters.
Tunis, 1 November 2016:
There was a sharp spike in civilian dead and wounded in Libya during October with UNSMIL recording 29 people killed and 73 injured, up from seven slain and four wounded in September.
The victims, largely from shelling and airstrikes, included seven dead children and three dead women. Thirteen children were also injured.
The majority of the deaths was in Benghazi where 19 were killed and 64 injured, followed by Zawia, where five civilians have perished in recent fighting. UNSMIL warned that this figure was likely to increase as reports of other fatalities are confirmed.
In Tripoli, one of the two dead was a Tawerghan woman in a refugee camp. There were also single killings in Derna, Sorman and Sirte, in the last of which the victim was Dutch photojournalist Jeroen Oerlemans.
The Benghazi death toll was boosted by the discovery of ten handcuffed bodies on a rubbish dump at Sheibna near the social security headquarters. As the month closed a car bomb killed four and injured 18 civilians in the city’s Kish Square. Among the slain was anti-corruption activist Mohamed Bughaighis.
UNSMIL said that two women and five children died in airstrikes on Benghazi’s Ganfouda district where civilians were trapped because of fighting between the Libyan National Army and the Benghazi Revolutionaries’ Shura Council. It noted “While no one claimed responsibility for the air strikes, information received indicated that the LNA or their allies carried out the airstrikes that caused civilian casualties in Ganfouda and Derna.”.
