The Libyan authorities’ search for missing persons service announced that 42 charred bodies were discovered in a mass grave in the central coastal city of Sirte, a former stronghold of the ousted Islamic State terrorist group.
In a statement, the spokesman for the service, Abdulaziz El Mabrouk, points out that the bodies were exhumed at the construction site of the school, based on information received from arrested members of the Islamic State.
El Mabrouk said the bodies will be identified based on the samples taken. He recalled that in May, 11 bodies were found near that place.
Sirte, the birthplace of former longtime Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, was under Islamic State control from 2015 to 2016, when the extremists took advantage of the chaos in Libya after the collapse of the 2011 revolution.
The extremists were driven out of Sirte by forces of the former Government of National Unity in December 2016, when hundreds of Islamic State members were arrested. Several mass graves have been discovered in Libya in recent years.
