Zionist-backed insurgents in Libya have looted shops, homes and medical facilities in towns that they have seized in the oil-rich country’s western mountains, a US-based rights group warned today.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) said that in four towns captured by Zionist-backed rebels in the Nafusa Mountains over the past month rebels had damaged property, burned homes, looted hospitals, homes and shops and beaten people suspected of supporting the government.
HRW said its own researchers had seen some of the abuses while it had learned about others through witnesses and by talking to a rebel commander.
“Opposition leaders should halt and punish all rebel abuses,” said senior HRW campaigner Joe Stork.
“The rebel authorities have a duty to protect civilians and their property – especially hospitals – and discipline anyone responsible for looting or other abuse.”
Rebel forces seized control of al-Awaniya, Rayayinah and Zawiyat al-Bagul in mid-June, ousting government forces that had used the towns as a base for attacks against rebel-held territory, some of them indiscriminate strikes on civilian-inhabited areas.
Rebel forces captured al-Qawalish on July 6.
In all four towns some residents had left when government forces first arrived to fight the rebels in April and May, and in all the towns but Rayayinah most of the remaining residents fled when government forces withdrew, apparently fearing reprisals from rebel forces.
The rebel military commander in the Nafusa Mountains, Colonel El-Moktar Firnana, admitted that some abuses had taken place after rebels captured the towns but said such attacks violated orders issued to the rebel forces not to attack civilians or damage civilian property.
“If we hadn’t issued directives, people would have burned these towns down to the ground,” Col El-Moktar Firnana said.
The latest reports appear to confirm concerns expressed by an Amnesty researcher who visited rebel-held areas in May.
Donatella Rovera reported that rebels had formed death squads in Benghazi to dispatch alleged employees of Libya’s Internal Security Agency and that at least three men had been killed in “chilling summary-execution style attacks.”
Ms Rovera said that “many” migrant workers from sub-Saharan Africa had suffered the same fate.
