UN Probing Reported Mass Grave On Libya-Tunisia Border

The U.N. human rights chief said on Tuesday that his office was following up on reports of a mass grave in the desert along the Libya-Tunisia border, after the bodies of at least 65 migrants were found at another site earlier this year.

In a speech, Volker Turk denounced widespread violations against migrants and refugees in Libya, which straddes a dangerous transit route that runs through the Sahara Desert and across the southern Mediterranean.

Abuses against migrants were being “perpetrated at scale, with impunity” by both state and non-state actors, Turk said, listing crimes including human trafficking, torture, forced labour, extortion, starvation, detention and mass expulsions.