South Sudan on Thursday said it was probing reports that nine of its citizens were killed in Libya during last week’s airstrike, which killed more than 50 people in a migrant detention centre in the capital, Tripoli.
A senior foreign ministry official said the country’s embassy in Egypt is engaging Libyan authorities to establish facts after a local media outlet reported that at least nine South Sudanese died during the air raid in Tajoura detention Centre.
“We have received reports that South Sudanese were among people killed in Libya.
“We want to find out exactly how many (South Sudanese migrants) were there and the number of those probably killed,” ministry spokesman Mawien Makol Arik said.
The UN said the Tajoura detention Centre was holding some 600 migrants at the time of the attack.
The conflict-torn North African country is a major transit point for African migrants seeking to cross to Europe through the Mediterranean Sea.
