Libyan authorities on Sunday said they have discovered a mass grave with 18 bodies in the Sabaa area of Sirte city- a former stronghold of the Islamic State (IS), reported The Aljazeera.
In a statement, the Missing Persons Authority said the bodies were unburied in the Sabaa area of Sirte, a city in central Libya, and were taken to a local hospital.
The statement added that samples of the discovered bones have been collected and taken to laboratories for analysis. However, the organization did not provide any other details on the cause of death for those found.
Sirte fell under the control of Islamic State militants between 2015 and 2016. ISIL had seized control of the strategic Libyan city taking advantage of the conflict between various factions of former rebels who emerged as powerbrokers after a NATO-backed uprising and the killing of Libya’s former leader Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.
In 2016, the United States-backed forces in collaboration with a United Nations-backed government in Tripoli drove ISIL out of the city. At present, hundreds of alleged former IS terrorists are in prisons across Libya, with many awaiting trial.
Sirte is currently controlled by renegade military commander Khalifa Haftar and his forces. Mass graves have been found across Libyan cities over the years amid growing instability in the country.
Last year, in October, officials said they found 42 bodies in a mass grave at a school site in Sirte. In December 2018, the bodies of 30 men were discovered near Sirte, believed to be the corpses of a group of Ethiopian Christians whom ISIL fighters executed in a video the group published years earlier.
In the western Libyan town of Tarhuna, hundreds of corpses have been uncovered across several graves after militia fighters loyal to Haftar retreated from the area in June 2020.
