(Tripoli) Four years after a bloody battle between Libyan rivals for control of the capital Tripoli, the inhabitants of the periphery, gradually returning home, live under the threat of hundreds of mines and unexploded ordnance, which claim even innocent lives. in peacetime.
Going out to play one morning in mid-May with two friends behind the family home in Al-Machrou, on the outskirts of Tripoli, ten-year-old Mohamad Saleh Farhat ended up in intensive care with serious injuries that almost cost him his life.
Accustomed to having fun with everything they find, the boys picked up a metal object, intrigued by its shape, and manipulated it, unaware of the danger, until it exploded.
“We found a metal cone near the garden wall, we picked it up thinking it was a piece of metal,” then “we got scared and threw it away,” says his comrade Hamam Saqer, 12 years old, seriously injured in the feet by mortar shell fragments.
“A few seconds later, a strong explosion threw us to the ground,” the boy told AFP, on his hospital bed, his body covered in bandages. “We didn’t realize it was ammunition, we’re never going to go back to that garden again!” “.
On the next bed, his brother Laith Saqer, eleven years old, escaped with a few superficial lesions. ” We did not know. We went to play, that’s all,” he says.
Wracked by divisions since the fall and death of dictator Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, Libya is governed by two rival administrations: one in Tripoli (west) led by Abdelhamid Dbeibah and recognized by the UN, the other in is, embodied by Parliament and affiliated with the powerful Marshal Khalifa Haftar.
The latter, with the military support of foreign allies (Russia, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates), launched a brutal offensive from April 2019 to June 2020 to seize Tripoli. It was stopped on the outskirts by the forces of the Government of National Unity, supported by Turkey.
According to a US State Department report, during the fighting around Tripoli in 2019-2020, “Kremlin-backed Wagner Group forces placed landmines and booby traps before withdrawing.” Some devices were hidden by pro-Haftar forces in toys, saucepans or toilet flushes.
Although Libya has managed to “clear” some 36 percent of the country’s identified hazardous areas, some 436 million square meters remain “contaminated,” according to Fatma Zourrig, head of the Mine Action Section of UNSMIL, the UN Mission in Libya.
“It will take five to ten years to eliminate” these explosive residues, but on condition that Libya “regains political stability and unified executive and legislative authorities,” a Defense Ministry official told AFP.
At the beginning of May, the Libyan Mine Action Center (LibMAC) of the Ministry of Defense established a collaboration to develop a “national anti-mine strategy” with the Geneva International Center for Humanitarian Demining (GICHD) and UNSMIL.
The southern suburbs of the capital, where the three friends were injured, have been the “scene of all wars since 2011 until today, and we frequently hear that neighbors suffered amputations after the explosion” of a machine, explains Saleh Farhat, father of little Mohamad.
“It’s a disaster area,” he says, hoping that the authorities will step up mine clearance in these residential areas. “I am heartbroken […] and the authorities are not doing enough to eliminate the mines,” laments Saleh, who has also lost a thriving business because of the war.
Seddik al-Abassi, an official at the town hall of Abouslim, “one of the most affected sectors of Tripoli”, emphasizes that “people are afraid because their lives are in danger”, urging the authorities to provide modern equipment allowing for a new inspection of these residential areas.”
In the meantime, the condition of young Mohamad, hit in the head by shrapnel, “is stable, but he will need a long convalescence,” his doctors estimate.