CAIRO: After several failed crossings from Libya to Italy and a long spell in detention, Nigerian migrant Olu had pinned his hopes on being evacuated from the besieged city of Tripoli with his family.
Instead, with refugee resettlement disrupted and air space closed against the new coronavirus, he found himself stranded in the Libyan capital as the war intensified, unable to work because of restrictions linked to the pandemic.
So far, there are no reports of the virus spreading among migrants in Libya. But there are fears it could have a devastating impact if it takes hold.
Libya has an estimated 654,000 migrants – more than 48,000 of them registered asylum seekers or refugees — many of them living in cramped conditions with little access to health care.
Restrictions on movement are driving them further into hardship.
“For the past two months I have not been able to work,” said Olu, 38, who has been living in a single room in Tripoli with his wife and five children since his release from a migrant detention center in February.
He has cobbled together enough money for rent and food with transfers from friends and a cash handout from the UN refugee agency UNHCR. But casual labor is still hard to find after a 24-hour curfew was relaxed late last month, and he is worried those funds will run out.
“If I lose this apartment I’d be out on the street and I’d be exposed to this deadly virus,” he said by phone from Tripoli. “So it’s very scary now.” He declined to give his family name for security reasons.
African and Middle Eastern migrants have long come to Libya seeking jobs in the country’s oil-powered economy.
As the country slid into conflict after a NATO-backed uprising in 2011, smugglers put hundreds of thousands of them in boats and sent them off across the Mediterranean toward Italy.
But in the past three years, crossings dropped sharply due to EU and Italian-backed efforts to disrupt smuggling networks and to increase interceptions by Libya’s coast guard, a move condemned by human rights groups.
Rockets
Those intercepted by the coast guard are detained in centers nominally under control of the government, or left to fend for themselves.
Migrant detention centers have been repeatedly hit in the fighting. Late on Thursday a volley of rockets landed on the Tripoli seafront, near a naval base where returned migrants disembark.
Abreham, an Eritrean migrant in detention in Zawiya, west of Tripoli, said he was sleeping in a hangar with about 230 people, including some suspected to have tuberculosis. Those who could not afford to bribe guards were kept in a separate, permanently locked hangar, he said.
“We don’t have enough food. We have 24 TB patients. We don’t have any precautions against coronavirus,” he said in a text message.
Aid agencies that struggle to operate in a country dominated by armed groups are finding it harder to trace returned migrants after they disembark.
“It seems like there are fewer people in detention,” said Tom Garofalo, Libya country director for the International Rescue Committee. “But the question is where are they going, and we don’t know the answer to that, so that’s very distressing.”
UNHCR had been evacuating or resettling some of the most vulnerable refugees until airspace was shut in early April.
The agency, which had to close a transit center in Tripoli in January due to interference by armed groups, is now handing out cash, food and hygiene kits. But payments are hampered by a long-running liquidity crisis at Libya’s banks, said UNHCR’s Libya mission head, Jean-Paul Cavalieri.
He worries that with the loss of livelihoods due to coronavirus, more will attempt sea crossings.
“People are getting desperate,” he said. “We are concerned that some of them will ... put their lives at risk on the sea.”
Coronavirus narrows options for migrants buffeted by Libya’s war
https://arab.news/ynebv
Coronavirus narrows options for migrants buffeted by Libya’s war
- Libya has an estimated 654,000 migrants – more than 48,000 of them registered asylum seekers or refugees — many of them living in cramped conditions
- Migrant detention centers have been repeatedly hit in the fighting
Syrian military tells civilians to evacuate contested area east of Aleppo amid rising tensions
- Syria’s military has announced it will open a “humanitarian corridor” for civilians to evacuate from an area in Aleppo province
- This follows several days of intense clashes between government forces and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces
DAMASCUS: Syria’s military said it would open a corridor Thursday for civilians to evacuate an area of Aleppo province that has seen a military buildup following intense clashes between government and Kurdish-led forces in Aleppo city.
The army’s announcement late Wednesday — which said civilians would be able to evacuate through the “humanitarian corridor” from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Thursday — appeared to signal plans for an offensive in the towns of Deir Hafer and Maskana and surrounding areas, about 60 kilometers (40 miles) east of Aleppo city.
The military called on the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces and other armed groups to withdraw to the other side of the the Euphrates River, to the east of the contested zone.
Syrian government troops have already sent troop reinforcements to the area after accusing the SDF of building up its own forces there, which the SDF denied. There have been limited exchanges of fire between the two sides, and the SDF has said that Turkish drones carried out strikes there.
The government has accused the SDF of launching drone strikes in Aleppo city, including one that hit the Aleppo governorate building on Saturday shortly after two Cabinet ministers and a local official held a news conference there.
The tensions in the Deir Hafer area come after several days of intense clashes last week in Aleppo city that ended with the evacuation of Kurdish fighters and government forces taking control of three contested neighborhoods. The fighting killed at least 23 people, wounded dozens more, and displaced tens of thousands.
The fighting broke out as negotiations have stalled between Damascus and the SDF, which controls large swaths of northeast Syria, over an agreement to integrate their forces and for the central government to take control of institutions including border crossings and oil fields in the northeast.
Some of the factions that make up the new Syrian army, which was formed after the fall of former President Bashar Assad in a rebel offensive in December 2024, were previously Turkiye-backed insurgent groups that have a long history of clashing with Kurdish forces.
The SDF for years has been the main US partner in Syria in fighting against the Daesh group, but Turkiye considers the SDF a terrorist organization because of its association with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, which has waged a long-running insurgency in Turkiye. A peace process is now underway.
Despite the long-running US support for the SDF, the Trump administration has also developed close ties with the government of interim Syrian President Ahmad Al-Sharaa and has pushed the Kurds to implement the integration deal. Washington has so far avoided publicly taking sides in the clashes in Aleppo.
The SDF in a statement warned of “dangerous repercussions on civilians, infrastructure, and vital facilities” in case of a further escalation and said Damascus bears “full responsibility for this escalation and all ensuing humanitarian and security repercussions in the region.”
Adm. Brad Cooper, commander of US Central Command, said in a statement Tuesday that the US is “closely monitoring” the situation and called for “all parties to exercise maximum restraint, avoid actions that could further escalate tensions, and prioritize the protection of civilians and critical infrastructure.” He called on the parties to “return to the negotiating table in good faith.”
Al-Sharaa blasts the SDF
In a televised interview aired Wednesday, Al-Sharaa praised the “courage of the Kurds” and said he would guarantee their rights and wants them to be part of the Syrian army, but he lashed out at the SDF.
He accused the group of not abiding by an agreement reached last year under which their forces were supposed to withdraw from neighborhoods they controlled in Aleppo city and of forcibly preventing civilians from leaving when the army opened a corridor for them to evacuate amid the recent clashes.
Al-Sharaa claimed that the SDF refused attempts by France and the US to mediate a ceasefire and withdrawal of Kurdish forces during the clashes due to an order from the PKK.
The interview was initially intended to air Tuesday on Shams TV, a broadcaster based in Irbil — the seat of northern Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdish region — but was canceled for what the station initially said were technical reasons.
Later the station’s manager said that the interview had been spiked out of fear of further inflaming tensions because of the hard line Al-Sharaa took against the SDF.
Syria’s state TV station instead aired clips from the interview on Wednesday. There was no immediate response from the SDF to Al-Sharaa’s comments.
