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The Libyan Red Crescent says at least 17 bodies, likely of Europe-bound migrants, have washed ashore in western Libya

By SAMY MAGDY Associated Press

October 6, 2021, 8:13 PM

3 min read

ABOARD GEO BARENTS -- At least 17 bodies, likely of Europe-bound migrants, have washed ashore in western Libya, the Libyan Red Crescent said as authorities began to vaccinate migrants in the North African country on Wednesday against the coronavirus, in cooperation with the United Nations.

The bodies were found Tuesday near the western Libyan town of Zawiya, the Red Crescents branch in the town said, and were handed over to authorities for burial.

The migrants likely drowned. The U.N. migration agency has said that more than 1,100 migrants have been reported dead or presumed dead in numerous boat mishaps and shipwrecks off Libya's coast so far this year.

The Red Crescent posted images purporting to show its workers carrying white body bags with the Mediterranean Sea in the background.

Libya was plunged into turmoil by the NATO-backed 2011 uprising that toppled and killed longtime dictator Moammar Gadhafi. The North African nation has since emerged as a popular, if extremely dangerous, route to Europe for those fleeing poverty and civil war in Africa and the Middle East.

Oil-rich Libya is largely governed by local militias, many of which profit from the trafficking. Rights groups say migrants traversing Libya have been tortured, raped and subjected to forced labor at the hands of traffickers and inside official detention centers.

U.N.-commissioned investigators found that the practice of arbitrary disappearances and violence against migrants inside Libyan prisons could amount to crimes against humanity.

On Wednesday, the president of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, Francesco Rocca, called on the European Union to take a stronger stand against perpetrators of possible war crimes and crimes against humanity in Libya. He was referring to findings by the U.N.-commissioned investigators.

After this new UN report, EU must cut all ties with those responsible for these acts against humanity and push Libyan authorities to intervene urgently and stop this shameful and inhumane treatment of human beings who just want to find safety, Rocca tweeted.

Meanwhile, Libyan health authorities started to vaccinate migrants in the country against the coronavirus, in cooperation with the U.N. migration agency. The campaign kicked off at a health facility in Tripoli, where several migrants got their first shot of the Chinese Sinopharm vaccine.

Federico Soda, the head of the International Organization for Migration in Libya, was present at Wednesday's kickoff of the vaccination drive. This is a health issue for the migrants that we are extremely concerned about," he said. But its also a public health issue ... to overcome the pandemic.

It was not immediately clear how the authorities would go about vaccinating thousands of migrants held in detention centers across Libya. Tens of thousands of others live openly in Libyan cities and towns.

Libya has reported more than 34,400 cases of COVID-19 and 4,720 deaths, but the tally is likely much higher in part due to limited testing as in other impoverished countries.

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Red Crescent says bodies of 17 people washed ashore in Libya - ABC News

Total of 520 mercenaries loyal to Turkey have reportedly left Libya heading to Syria in less than a week. It comes only a few days after the 5+5 Military Committee reached an agreement on an action plan to remove all mercenaries and foreign forces from Libya gradually.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights had said that a new batch of Syrian mercenaries in Libya arrived in the Syrian territories via Turkey.

The agreement reached by the 5+5 Military Committee, according to the UN Support Mission in Libya, was drafted in line with the ceasefire agreement signed on 23 October 2020, United Nations Security Council resolutions 2570 and 2571 on Libya, and the conclusions of the Berlin Conference.

Despite the agreement, Turkey transferred its affiliated mercenaries whose identities were exposed from Libya to Syria, according to the Syrian Observatory, and replaced them with new mercenaries from Syria, according to a regular switching process.

The Turkish-backed factions in Syria sent about 130 mercenaries to Turkey on 6 October, in preparation for their transfer to Libya, according to the Syrian Observatory.

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520 mercenaries loyal to Turkey left Libya within week - Daily News Egypt

By Sami Zaptia.

A Libya Day under the banner Tunisian-Libyan Partnership Projects and the Reconstruction of Libya was held at the Mediterranean building exhibition Medibat in the Tunisian city of Sfax from 6-9 October (Photo: Medibat).

London, 12 October 2021:

A Libya Day under the banner Tunisian-Libyan Partnership Projects and the Reconstruction of Libya was held at the Mediterranean Building Exhibition Medibat (Salon Mditerranen du btiment Medibat) in the Tunisian city of Sfax from 6-9 October.

Over 35 Libyan participants took part including representatives of municipalities and Daheir Al-Jazwi, the General Manager of the Tripoli Chamber of Commerce.

Several projects for Libyas reconstruction were presented by several Libyan participants which were suitable for Tunisian investment and partnership. The presentations also reviewed Tunisian companies currently operating in Libya in several projects.

Linking on several levels be it government to government, private sector to private sector and with municipalities, were also discussed.

Original post:
Libya Day at the Sfax Medibat Mediterranean building exhibition discusses Libyan-Tunisian partnerships | - Libya Herald

By Sami Zaptia.

Deputy Prime Minister Hussien Gatrani is threatening escalation if his Prime Minister does not become more conciliatory (Photo: GNU)

London, 11 October 2021:

With the 24 December 2021 elections looking in the balance, Libya looked like it was heading into another west-east split and an unravelling of the November 2020 Libyan Political Dialogue Forums (LPDF) Roadmap yesterday.

The threat of political breakdown came in the form of a statement read out by Hussien Gatrani, Deputy Prime Minister of Libyas Government of National Unity (GNU). Al-Gatrani, who hails from the east, was issuing the televised statement in front of a gathering of Libyas eastern based (Barqa/Cyrenaica) Deputy Ministers, Ministers and mayors in Benghazi.

In his ten-point statement, Gatrani:

Analysis

A roadmap, within a roadmap within a roadmap

The November 2020 LPDF Roadmap is Libyas current political roadmap within the 2015 Skhirat Libyan Political Agreement (LPA) which is in turn within the Transitional Constitutional Declaration (TCD) of August 2011.

The LPA was the political fix after militias carried out a coup in Tripoli in 2014 in reaction to losing power after the 2014 elections. The 2011 TCD was the temporary social contract to fill the void left by the collapse of the 42-year Qaddafi regime.

The current Government of National Unity (GNU) led by Abd Alhamid Aldabaiba is the selected child of the LPDF Road Map. The original 74 LPDF members were chosen by UNSMIL to broadly represent Libya.

UNSMIL and the international community created the LPDF to get passed Libyas political impasse and quagmire where parliament (the House of Representatives HoR), the High State Council and the Faiez Serraj Government of National Accord (GNA) failed to achieve consensus and move forward to elections to get the country out of its interim state.

Centrifugal effect of threat of elections?

It seems that the threat of Libyan elections in December this year, or soon afterwards, is having a centrifugal effect on Libyan politics. There is a fear of change and the forthcoming political unknown by the status quo stakeholders who fear losing power or even being vulnerable to prosecution or persecution after any elections that may sweep the old political guard aside.

LPDF political quid-pro-quo

The implication of Gatranis statement is that there was a written and an unwritten agreement of a quid pro quo, that in return for Khalifa Hafter, parliament and eastern Libya, buying into the Aldabaiba GNU the GNU would make real political concessions to the east. This included moving forward with decisions after consultation and in consensus.

Aldabaiba monopolising power?

Aldabaiba is accused of being on a state-sponsored election campaign and of taking decisions unilaterally. He is accused of refusing to appoint a stand-alone Defence Minister in order to consolidate his military and political hold on western Libya and indirectly on the other two regions.

Tripoli centralisation of power?

Gatrani accuses Aldabaiba of increased centralization rather than Aldabaibas claim of decentralizing powers to the regions and local councils. This includes the effective refusal to return the National Oil Corporation (NOC) to its original site in Benghazi. Tripoli has failed to reopen the bank clearing system closed during Hafters war on Tripoli in order to starve eastern based banks accused of financially supporting Hafter.

Reopening the bank clearance system

The 23 October 2020 ceasefire agreement (which ended Hafters war on Tripoli) through which Hafter allowed the eastern-based oil supplies to flow again prescribes for the reopening of the bank clearance system. The closure of the clearance system is causing huge hardship to Libyans in the east and stunting the regions development. It is also threatening to collapse the whole Libyan banking system which is now lopsided.

Aldabaiba divisive?

Gatrani also accused Aldabaiba of playing to the western-based gallery by being divisive in some of his media statements rather than attempting to seek a middle path to keep the opposing Libya political outlooks united.

Gatrani threatening escalation?

At the end of the statement, Gatrani threatened escalatory measures by the east. The Aldabaiba government has already been downgraded to a caretaker government, but its public relations / propaganda machine seems to be going into overdrive or election campaign mode.

Every road or clinic or building completed is now a huge PR event for the government for the next three months.

5+5 JMC agreement

Its ironic that the political strata is falling out at just the time when the two sets of military heads have reached an historic agreement in Geneva to start organized and coordinated withdrawal of their aligned foreign militias/forces.

Escalation: stopping oil production v war?

The room for political manoeuvre is limited for the east short of going nuclear and shutting down oil production or all-out war. There is little leverage they have on Tripoli. The government has been demoted but it falls to the Tripoli-based Central Bank of Libya and Audit Bureau to agree or stop its spending decisions.

It now falls to the international community to try to broker between the two sides to deescalate the tension. But it seems the closer Libya gets to just the idea of elections the higher the stakes and the higher the risks being taken by both sides of Libyas political divide.

Read more here:
Libya on brink of another west-east split and unravelling of LPDF's Road Map? | - Libya Herald

A report by Operation IRINI, which monitors the arms embargo on Libya, revealed that Turkey refused to inspect its ships bound for Libya 6 times as reported by the Libya Review.

In its September report, IRINI leadership said that the naval operation is the only international actor that implements United Nations Security Council (UNSC) resolutions related to the arms embargo imposed on Libya, in an effective, impartial and balanced manner.

Since its launch in April 2020, IRINI has inspected 20 suspicious ships, one of which was transferred to a European port, where its cargo was unloaded. Another 4,002 commercial ships were inspected, IRINIs September report said.

IRINI has investigated the details of 610 suspicious flights, 25 airports and 16 ports, submitted 31 special reports to the United Nations (UN) Panel of Experts on Libya, and monitored 26 violations of the arms embargo and oil smuggling activities, the report added.

IRINI issued 48 recommendations to relevant law enforcement agencies to inspect suspicious ships in the ports of European Union (EU) member states, 39 of which were carried out.

In September, it also monitored 36 suspicious flights, 25 airports and 16 ports, and issued 7 inspection recommendations for suspicious ships located in the ports of EU countries.

All inspections or friendly methods are always carried out in accordance with the framework of relevant UNSC resolutions, and in full respect of international law, adding that, inspections and friendly methods do not affect the nature of the activities of the ships that have been questioned or inspected.

According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), about 300 Syrian fighters left for Turkey on October 5th, from which they were transferred to Syria.

The number of Syrian fighters loyal to Turkey and present in Libya is about 7,000 Syrians, according to the SOHR.

Operation Irini

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IRINI : Turkey Refused Inspection Of Ships In Libya - GreekCityTimes.com