BENGHAZI, Libya -- An airstrike hit a detention center for migrants near the Libyan capital of Tripoli early Wednesday, killing at least 44 people and wounding dozens of others in an attack that the U.N. human-rights chief said could amount to a war crime.
The Tripoli-based government blamed the attack on forces associated with Gen. Khalifa Hifter, whose Libyan National Army has been waging an offensive against rival militias in the capital of the war-torn North African country since April.
It refocused attention and raised questions about the European Union's policy of cooperating with the militias that hold migrants in crowded and squalid detention centers to prevent them from crossing the Mediterranean to seek better lives in Europe. Most of them were apprehended by the Libyan coast guard, which is funded and trained by the EU to stem the flow of migrants.
At the United Nations, the Security Council scheduled an emergency session for later Wednesday on the airstrike in Tripoli's Tajoura neighborhood, and Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called for an independent investigation.
Hifter's forces said they were targeting a nearby military site, not the detention center. There also were suspicions of involvement by foreign countries allied with his forces. Countries assisting Hifter include Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Russia.
Two migrants said the airstrike hit a compound that houses a weapons warehouse and an adjacent detention center holding about 150 migrants, including several Sudanese and Moroccans. The two spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal.
A Moroccan consular official said 15 Moroccans were in the center and at least three were slightly injured. The official was not authorized to be publicly named according to government policy.
The U.N. gave an initial figure of 44 dead and more than 130 wounded. But the two migrants said that three or four escaped harm and about 20 were wounded. They said the rest were killed, indicating the final death toll could be much higher.
Prince Alfani, the Libya medical coordinator for Doctors Without Borders, visited the detention center hours before the airstrike and said it had held 126 migrants. Survivors fear for their lives, he said, urging their immediate evacuation.
Charlie Yaxley, a spokesman for the U.N. refugee agency, said the detention center's proximity to the weapons depot "made it a target for the airstrikes."
"Coordinates of this detention center were well-known to both sides of the conflict," Yaxley said. "It was known that there were 600 people living inside. So there can be no excuse for this center having been hit."
U.N. human-rights chief Michelle Bachelet said the attack "may, depending on the precise circumstances, amount to a war crime."
The attack "killed by surprise innocent people whose dire conditions forced them to be in that shelter," said U.N. envoy for Libya Ghassan Salame.
Magdalena Mughrabi, deputy Middle East and North Africa director for Amnesty International, said the attack "must be investigated as a war crime" by the International Criminal Court. The deaths are the "consequences of Libya and Europe's callous migration policies," she said.
The Tripoli-based Government of National Accord, which is backed by the U.N., called for an investigation by the world body.
At least 6,000 migrants from Eritrea, Ethiopia, Somalia, Sudan and other nations are locked in dozens of detention facilities in Libya run by militias accused of torture and other abuses.
Gen. Khaled el-Mahjoub, a spokesman for Hifter's Libyan National Army forces, denied targeting the detention center, saying it was the militia camp in the Tajoura neighborhood that was the target. He did not deny, however, that the migrant detention center was hit.
Information for this article was contributed by Maggie Michael, Edith M. Lederer, Angela Charlton and Lori Hinnant of The Associated Press.
A Section on 07/04/2019