Jan 15 (Reuters) – At least 21 bodies of migrants have been found in a mass grave in eastern Libya, with up to 10 survivors in the group bearing signs of having been tortured before they were freed from captivity, two security sources said on Thursday.
The sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, said security authorities raided a farm near the town of Ajdabiya after receiving a report of migrants from sub-Saharan Africa being held there.
“We found migrants – men, women and children – bearing signs of torture. They were taken to a hospital where they reported that other migrants had been with them and then disappeared,” one of the security sources told Reuters.
The mass grave was discovered some 10 km (six miles)southeast of Ajdabiya, which is around 160 km from Benghazi, the second largest city in the North African country.
FARM OWNER ARRESTED
The farm owner was arrested and had admitted the presence of a mass grave on his property, the sources said.
Unverified pictures posted on the internet showed a number of security personnel and Red Crescent volunteers placing bodies allegedly found on the farm property into black plastic bags.
How the migrants died remained unclear and investigations were underway, said one of the security sources.
Libya has become a transit route for migrants fleeing conflict and poverty to Europe via dangerous routes across the desert and over the Mediterranean since the toppling of Muammar Gaddafi in a NATO-backed uprising in 2011.
The oil-based Libyan economy is also a draw for impoverished migrants seeking work, but security throughout the sprawling country is poor, leaving migrants vulnerable to abuses.
MIGRANT TRAGEDIES
In July, more than 100 migrants, including five women, were freed from captivity in Ajdabiya after being held for ransom by a gang, according to Libya’s attorney general.
In September, the U.N. International Organization for Migration said at least 50 people had died after a vessel carrying 75 Sudanese refugees caught fire off Libya’s coast.
In mid-October, 61 bodies of migrants were recovered on the Mediterranean coast west of the capital Tripoli.
U.N. data collected in 100 Libyan municipalities between August and October 2025 showed they were hosting a total of 928,839 migrants from 44 countries.
However, several states including Britain, Spain, Norway and Sierra Leone urged Libya at a U.N. meeting in Geneva in November to close detention centres where rights groups say migrants and refugees have been tortured, abused and sometimes killed.
(Reporting by Ayman al-Warfalli and Ahmed Elumami; writing by Ahmed Elumami; editing by Mark Heinrich)
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