Casualties of Armed Clashes in Libya, January – September 2019
The third quarter of 2019 witnessed continuation of casualties of civilians and combatants since the start of the attack on Tripoli, which began on 4th April 2019, by renegade Maj General Khalifa Haftar. During these last three months, 1’116 people have been victims of armed clashes in Libya; nearly half of them, 544 victims, were killed, 499 were injured, and 73 were abducted or captured.
Overall, in the first nine months of 2019 most of the casualties occurred during the second quarter of the year; approximately 5’700 victims, accounting for 76% of the total number of victims during the nine months of this year. In terms of months, April was the most violent month; 32%, or nearly a third of the victims of armed confrontations this year, followed by June with 27%.
During the period of the report, 7’489 victims were killed, wounded or captured as a result of armed confrontations and clashes in different regions and cities of Libya. Of the victims, 89% were combatants and 858 were civilians, including 23 children. About a quarter of the victims, 1782 were killed, 5136 were injured (~ 68%), and 571 were detained (~ 8%).
Geographically, incidents were documented across different regions of Libya; three quarters of the victims were the result of armed aggression against the capital Tripoli and its environs; approximately 88% of the victims (6’600 victims) were victims of clashes around Tripoli and some surrounding towns and cities[i]. Armed clashes in the city of Merziq in August, added 343 victims to the 63 documented in February, that is 406 casualties during the reporting period, 162 of whom were killed, topping the list behind the city of Tripoli[ii] in terms of the number of victims, which reached 5’609 victims. The majority of the victims, 7,418 (99%) of the total, were documented in only 10 cities, while the remaining 71 (1%) were documented in thirteen different towns and cities.
In the second quarter of this year, the main source of data for this report was the reports and statistics published by the World Health Organization (WHO) office in Libya[iii]. But since July 15th, the World Health Organization has stopped publishing the numbers of victims of the aggression on Tripoli and its suburbs without any explanations[iv]. The United Nations Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL) has also stopped publishing its monthly[v] “Human Rights Report on Civilian Casualties” since May 2019, the last report[vi] published by the mission was on 22nd May 2019, covering the period from 1st February to 31st March 2019. No explanation or notice was provided by UNSMIL as to the reasons for ending the monitoring of civilian victims, nor did it clarify whether or not it will resume monitoring.
The World Health Organization (WHO) published its reports, on casualties of the clashes in Libya, irregularly. At the beginning of the attack on Tripoli, the reports were quite frequent, sometimes almost daily, and then became less frequent, before it finally stopped.
WHO reports, as noted in a previous report[vii] by Human Rights Solidarity (HRS), were cumulative reports of the number of dead and wounded, without clarifying the areas where the casualties were documented[viii], nor indicating the gender of victims, and only began to clarify the number of civilians among the victims since May 27th, until the last report on July 15th. The reports of WHO did not include statistics on prisoners and missing persons, nor did they state whether or not they included injuries or deaths among the forces of Khalifa Haftar[ix].
For the foregoing reasons, we note that the actual number of victims of armed confrontations, especially since the beginning of April, might be greater than the figures documented in this report[x].
Disclaimer: The report is from monitoring of casualties of armed confrontations in Libya during the First nine months of 2019, using reports of official national & international institutions and media institutions as sources of the data. The report includes only confirmed incidents by comparing several sources.
[i] Tripoli (5’609), Qasr Ben Gheshir* (355), Gheryan (249), Tarhuna (199), az-Zawiyah (131), al-Asabe’a (16), Aziziyah (8), U’jailat (3), Misrata (1), Zuwara (1) & Zintan (1); total (6’573).
[ii] Though, a large proportion of the victims of the armed clashes around Tripoli are combatants from other cities, but the geographical distribution of the victims in this report is by location of the clashes, not by the birthplace or residence of the combatants.
[iii] World Health Organization-Libya account on Twitter (link).
[iv] Since 15th July 2019, tweets posted on the official Twitter account of the “World Health Organization – Libya” did not mention or address the armed clashes around the city of Tripoli, not even the attack on a field hospital on Tripoli Airport road, on 27th July 2019, which killed five medical personnel and injured eight others. The website of the WHO Regional Office for the Eastern Mediterranean did publish a press statement condemning this attack, but its Libya office remained silent. See WHO EMRO “Five medical staff dead in latest attack on health care facilities in Tripoli”, 28th July 2019.
[v] United Nations Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL): “Human Rights Report on Civilian Casualties”.
[vi] United Nations Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL): “Civilian Casualties Report from 1 February to 31 March 2019”, 22nd May 2019.
[vii] Human Rights Solidarity: “Casualties of Armed Clashes in Libya, January – June 2019”, 4th August 2019.
[viii] For example, the report by WHO on 15th July 2019: “The violence in Tripoli has killed 1093 people, including 106 civilians, and injured 5752 people, including 294 civilians. More than 100 000 people are displaced.” (link).
[ix] Throughout the reporting period, the spokesman for the forces of the renegade Maj General Khalifa Haftar, made only one announcement of their casualties, it was on April 10th, 2019.
[x] For example, we did not include the number of casualties among the forces of Haftar, announced by the military spokesman of Haftar on April 10th, 2019 “Mesmari, confirmed during a press conference on Wednesday in Benghazi, that 28 personnel of the National Army were killed and 92 were wounded in the battles of Tripoli” (Almotawaset), and on June 13th, 2019 “medical sources announced the deaths of 33 fighters belonging to the Karama operation Tuesday, 11/6 at the Tripoli International Airport frontline” (Victims Organization for Human Rights). These figures, and others, were assumed to be included in the reports of the World Health Organization.
Article composed with the online wysiwyg editor. Please subscribe for a membership to remove promotional messages like this one from the edited documents.
