Libya's security authorities have recovered nearly 50 bodies from two mass graves in the country's southeastern desert, officials said on Sunday, in the latest tragedy involving people seeking to reach Europe through the North African country.
The bodies of at least 28 migrants have been found in a mass grave in the southeastern city of Kufra, the office of the attorney general posted on Facebook on Sunday.
The discovery was made just days after another mass grave with 19 bodies was made on a farm, also in Kufra.
Officials found the latest grave after raiding a human trafficking centre, according to Mohamed al-Fadeil, head of the security chamber in Kufra.
Authorities said they freed 76 migrants from "forced detention" at the trafficking centre, and arrested three people - a Libyan and two foreigners - on suspicion of detaining and torturing migrants.
"There was a gang whose members deliberately deprived illegal migrants of their freedom, tortured them and subjected them to cruel, humiliating and inhumane treatment," the statement said.
Prosecutors ordered the suspects to remain in detention pending investigation. The recovered bodies have been taken for autopsy.
The search in Kufra - some 1,700 kilometres from the capital Tripoli - is continuing.
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Migrants' mass graves are not uncommon in Libya. Last year, authorities unearthed the bodies of at least 65 migrants in the Shuayrif region, 350 kilometres south of Tripoli. The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) had described it as "deeply shocking".
After the toppling of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi in a Nato-backed uprising in 2011, the country has become a key transit route for migrants to reach Europe via the dangerous desert and Mediterranean Sea.
Oil-rich Libya has been ruled for most of the past decade by rival governments in eastern and western Libya, each backed by an array of militias and foreign governments.
Human traffickers have benefited from more than a decade of instability, smuggling migrants across the country's borders with six nations, including Chad, Niger, Sudan Egypt, Algeria and Tunisia.
According to Unicef, more than 2,200 people died or went missing in the Mediterranean in 2024, trying to reach Europe.
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(with newswires)
