The top UN envoy for Libya warned on Tuesday that the North African country is on the verge of a civil war that could “lead to the permanent division of the country,”
“The damage already done will take years to mend, and that’s only if the war is ended now,” Ghassan Salame, the UN secretary-general’s special representative for Libya, told the Security Council in a briefing.
“This is the report whose delivery I have spent the nearly last two years trying to avoid. Forty-eight days into the attack on Tripoli by Gen. Haftar’s forces, there has already been too much death and destruction,” Salame said, referring to the new offensive on the Libyan capital launched on April 4 by the self-proclaimed Libyan National Army led by Gen. Khalifa Haftar.
Humanitarian actors estimate that over 100,000 men, women and children remain trapped in immediate front-line areas, with over 400,000 more in areas directly impacted by the clashes, he said.
Since the start of the latest conflict, 460 have been reported dead, 29 of them civilians; over 2,400 injured, the majority of them civilians; and over 75,000 people forced from their homes, all of them civilians. Over half of the displaced are women and children, said Salame.
Salame called on the Security Council to stop countries bolstering Libya’s conflict through weapons imports, noting that “without a robust enforcement mechanism, the arms embargo into Libya will become a cynical joke. Some nations are fueling this bloody conflict; the United Nations should put an end to it.”
Since 2014, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt have provided Haftar’s LNA with military equipment such as aircraft and helicopters, according to U.N. sanctions monitors.
Additionally, GNA-allied forces received a shipment of armored vehicles and arms on Saturday. Pictures and videos posted on their Facebook pages showed what appeared to be dozens of Turkish-made BMC Kirpi armored vehicles in Tripoli’s port.
Salame described the delivery as a “blatant and televised breach of the arms embargo,” adding that the LNA had been receiving “ongoing deliveries of banned modern weaponry.”
He also stressed the critical conditions for migrants and refugees in Libya, with nearly 3,400 refugees and migrants are trapped in detention centers are exposed to, or in close proximity of, the fighting.
The UN humanitarian agencies have been working around the clock to transfer the most vulnerable from the conflict-affected areas to safer locations, Salame said.
Salame also warned that the attack on Tripoli imperils the security of Libya’s immediate neighbors and the wider Mediterranean region.
The security vacuum created by the withdrawal of many of Gen. Haftar’s troops from the south of the country, coupled with the focus of the western forces on the defense of the capital, is already being exploited by the Islamic State and al-Qaeda groups.
Since April 4, there have been four separate IS attacks in the south of Libya, leaving 17 people killed, more than 10 others wounded and eight kidnapped, said the UN envoy. “Libyan forces that had in the past courageously defended their country against these terrorist groups are now busy fighting each other.”
