Spiegel Online | 10.10.2017

In der libyschen Küstenstadt Sabratha wurden offenbar Tausende Flüchtlinge von einer Miliz festgehalten. Nun ist die Truppe aus der Stadt vertrieben, das UNHCR nimmt sich der entkräfteten Menschen an.

Sie lebten tagelang ohne Essen und Wasser, eingesperrt oder versteckt aus Angst vor schweren Gefechten in der Stadt: Tausende Flüchtlinge aus Afrika sind in der libyschen Küstenstadt Sabratha aus illegalen Camps und Häusern befreit worden. Von dort zogen sie in eine zentrale Halle um, wo sie registriert und versorgt wurden.

Nach Uno-Angaben waren zwischen 4000 und 6000 Flüchtlinge in inoffiziellen Flüchtlingslagern in der Stadt gefunden worden. Ein Vertreter des Uno-Flüchtlingshilfswerks (UNHCR) in Libyen, Roberto Mignone, sagte, die Lage sei ausgesprochen schwierig.

Hunderte hätten sich außerdem von Sabratha in Richtung des 25 Kilometer entfernten Zuwarah aufgemacht, meldete die Uno-Migrationsorganisation IOM. Rund 1700 Menschen brauchten dort dringend Hilfe, sagte ein Vertreter von Nothelfern in Zuwarah.

Mitte September waren in der Küstenstadt Sabratha rund 70 Kilometer westlich der Hauptstadt Tripolis heftige Kämpfe zwischen verfeindeten Milizen ausgebrochen. Seit Freitag ist es in Sabratha wieder ruhig. Die Stadt gilt als einer der wichtigsten Ausgangspunkte für Migranten, die über das Mittelmeer nach Europa gelangen möchten.

Die Zahl der Flüchtlinge, die in den Sommermonaten von Libyen aus in Italien ankamen, war stark zurückgegangen. Dafür soll auch eine Gruppe mit Namen Brigade 48 verantwortlich gewesen sein, die in Sabratha damals die Macht übernommen hatte. Die Brigade soll von der Regierung in Tripolis beauftragt worden sein, die Flucht über das Mittelmeer zu unterbinden.
Bei den Kämpfen zwischen mehreren Milizen um die Vorherrschaft in Sabratha starben in den vergangenen drei Wochen laut Gesundheitsministerium 43 Menschen, 340 wurden verletzt.

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Libya Herald | 10.10.2017

Over 7,000 immigrants said to be found in Sabratha after fighting end

By Vanessa Tomassini

Over 7,000 illegal migrants who were in Sabratha hoping to take passage across the Mediterranean to Europe have been discovered in the town and since Friday have been or are being processed through its Dahman migrant transit centre, according to the head of the Libyan NGO, Migrace Organisation.

Ali Emgaidesh told the Libya Herald that the migrants had been held by the Amu Brigade in a number of locations in the town. They had had been discovered by the Anti-IS Operations Room (AIOR) which last week defeated the Amu and took control of Sabratha. The AIOR had then taken them to the Dahman centre.

“The forces of AIOR were carrying out raids on houses and buildings, supposedly hiding Dabbashi allies and migrants in Sabratha,” Emgaidesh said.

He warned that numbers at the centre could rise because AIOR were still discovering migrants around the town. He also said that it was also finding it difficult to cope with the existing numbers.

“Food and water are very limited, although some provisions are being donated by the local community,” he said.

Migrace is helping provide food, clothing and medicines for the migrants at the centre, and the International Organization for Migration (IOM), has been working at the centre since Saturday. But Dahman “has no basic facilities”, an IOM official said today.

After being processed, migrants are being sent by truck to detention centres elsewhere, some to the detention centre in Gharyan, but most to centres in Tripoli. They are usually moved around a hundred at a time. However, moving migrants to the centre in Gharyan has been proving particularly difficult at present, the IOM official told this newspaper, because of the road being blocked.

Like Emgaidesh, the head of the local coastguard, Bassem Gharabli, also appealed to the Presidency Council’s government of national accord and the international community for support to deal with the migrants.

Sabratha did not have the capabilities, he said. “We can’t provide care for them.”

Establishing a clear picture on the numbers involved is far from easy. Different organisations have different figures for the number of migrants found in Sabratha.

Apart from Emgaidesh’s 7,000, Gharabli last Friday said that the AIOR had found more than 6,000 migrants in different locations in the town “ready to leave illegally from the Libyan coast to Italy”.

For its part, the IOM, which has been working at the centre since Saturday also speaks of 6,000 migrants having been in Sabratha at the time the fighting started. But of these, it says, some 2,000 managed to make their way to Zuwara. “Some made their way by foot”, an IOM official said. The remainder were processed through Dahman.

“At least 4,000 migrants, previously held in numerous informal detention centres and camps [in Sabratha], have been transferred to a hangar in the town’s Dahman area where the IOM, the UN migration agency, is providing emergency assistance”, an IOM statement at the weekend read.

At that point it reported that 2,600 migrants (1,819 men, 704 women and 77 children) were being kept there by the Libyan Directorate for Combatting Illegal Migration (DCIM).

“More migrants from other locations in Sabratah were later transferred to the hangar and more are anticipated to arrive soon,” it added.

That has been the case. One official described the situation at Dahman today, Tuesday, as “chaotic”.

Some 2,000 migrants have already been moved out of the camp by DCIM which has stressed that all the migrants in Sabratha would be transferred to detention centres elsewhere. But for every hundred or so that leave many more are brought in. Many of the migrants, especially children, do so without anything and need medical assistance and basic aid, including food, water and core relief items.

The discovery of thousands of illegal migrants in places controlled by the head of the Amu Brigade, Ahmed Dabashi, is seen as giving the lie to his assertion last month that while he had been a people smuggler, he had stopped and was now working to prevent smuggling. Indeed, there were already claims at the time that the only smuggling he was trying to stop was that by his rivals, not his own operations.

The Migrace Organization started in 2016, working closely with the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) and with the IOM. As well as Sabratha, it operates in Zawia, , Zuwara, Zintan and Gharyan.

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Reuters | 09.10.2017

U.N. assisting thousands of migrants in Libyan smuggling hub

Aidan Lewis, Ahmed Elumami

TUNIS/TRIPOLI (Reuters) – U.N. agencies said on Monday they were trying to provide urgent help to large numbers of migrants held and then stranded in the smuggling hub of Sabratha as rival factions battled for control of the city.

At least 4,000 migrants, including pregnant women, newborn babies and unaccompanied children, have been transferred from informal camps and housing to a hangar in the city since the clashes ended on Friday, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said. The U.N. refugee agency, UNHCR, said some 6,000 had been held at the informal sites.

Hundreds of migrants who had left Sabratha arrived in Zuwara, about 25 km (15 miles) to the west, on foot along the beach, said Sadeeq Al-Jayash, head of Zuwara’s emergency committee.

“They come walking in groups … for example there were various groups that came on Sunday — 50, then 100 and 200 at night,” said Jayash. There were about 1,700 migrants currently in Zuwara “in desperate need of help”, he said.

Sabratha has been the most common point of departure for mostly sub-Saharan African migrants trying to cross the Mediterranean by boat from Libya.

But the number of crossings dropped sharply in July after an armed group struck a deal with officials from the U.N.-backed government in Tripoli to block departures, under pressure from Italy and other European Union member states.

That set off three weeks of fighting among rival factions that left at least 43 dead and 340 wounded, according to a new health ministry toll, and ended with the withdrawal of the armed group. The migrants who have since been rounded up were being held at sites that the group had controlled, local officials said.

“We are seriously concerned by the large number of migrants caught up in recent developments in Sabratha,” Othman Belbeisi, IOM Libya chief of mission, said in a statement.

Some migrants are being sent on to detention centers elsewhere in western Libya that are nominally under the control of the Tripoli government.

IOM officials say those centers, which were housing some 5,000 migrants, risk being overwhelmed by the new arrivals. Conditions in the centers are often dire and abuse widespread.

“Alternatives to detention must be found for migrants in Libya. In the meantime, IOM continues to provide direct humanitarian, health and psychosocial assistance to meet the urgent needs of the thousands of migrants being affected,” Belbeisi said.

Local sources have previously said that an estimated 10,000 migrants were being held in the Sabratha area.

The head of Sabratha’s department for countering illegal migration told Reuters on Saturday that help was badly needed as some migrants had received no food or water for six days.

The UNHCR said it had approached Libyan authorities to ensure that refugees among the migrants were freed from detention.