“Freedom! Freedom!”
Six refugees were killed on Friday in an attempt to break out of an overcrowded detention center for migrants in the Libyan capital Tripoli. Guards shot the people, said the Libya head of the International Organization for Migration (IOM), Federico Soda, the AFP news agency.
At least 20 other people were injured and hundreds fled the detention center in the chaos.
Local media quoted an interior ministry official saying that around 2,000 migrants may have escaped in the outbreak. Hundreds of people were seen on videos on the Internet, climbing over a metal fence and running across streets.
A refugee shouted “Freedom! Freedom!”.
An AFP reporter later saw at least 140 people who had apparently been recaptured by security forces. They were taken away in buses. The human rights organization Amnesty condemned the “unlawful lethal violence” by the security forces.
3,000 migrants, mainly from countries south of the Sahara, are currently housed in the affected Al-Mabani camp. About a third of them live on the premises outside the detention center. The camp is actually only designed for 1000 people. The IOM denounced the “terrible” living conditions in the overcrowded facility.
The incident came a week after extensive raids in Tripoli, primarily aimed at illegal migrants. Around 4,000 people were arrested.
The United Nations has repeatedly criticized the “arbitrary detention” of migrants in the war-torn country. Refugees report overcrowding, hunger, torture and inadequate medical care in the prisons, which are often run by militias rather than government officials.