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UN probing reported mass grave on Libya-Tunisia border


The U.N. human rights chief said on Tuesday that his office was following up on reports of a mass grave in the desert along the Libya-Tunisia border, after the bodies of at least 65 migrants were found at another site earlier this year.

In a speech, Volker Turk denounced widespread violations against migrants and refugees in Libya, which straddes a dangerous transit route that runs through the Sahara Desert and across the southern Mediterranean.

Abuses against migrants were being “perpetrated at scale, with impunity” by both state and non-state actors, Turk said, listing crimes including human trafficking, torture, forced labour, extortion, starvation, detention and mass expulsions.

“I urge the authorities to respond swiftly to our inquiries, and to investigate these crimes fully,” he told the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva in a speech addressing Libya’s human rights record over the last year.

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