Hundreds of corpses of Islamic State fighters are stuck in Libya as the country’s government negotiates the return of the bodies to their countries of origin, a report said.
Most of the dead were killed in December when Libyan forces defeated IS in a battle at Sirte, on Libya’s Mediterranean coast.
They were thern transported to a morgue in Misrata, where they remain to date.
According to Reuters, the fighters’ home countries have in most cases been reluctant to accept the remains because that would reveal the number of their citizens that left to join the Islamists terror group.
The report said that officials in Tunisia estimate that more than 3,000 from the country joined jihadists in Iraq, Syria and Libya.
Libyan authorities have documented and photographed the bodies and collected DNA samples.
The Islamic State had captured Sirte in 2015, and held onto it until Libyan forces overcame them in December 2016.
Last week, Fox News reported that despite heavy losses for ISIS on the battlefield in recent months, Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, the terror organization’s leader, has eluded capture.
