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Libyans learn about more mass graves

06 October 2011 03:56 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. fficials from the transitional council ruling Libya have reportedly discovered two new mass graves containing as many as 900 people, who are suspected not to have died long ago, APA reports quoting Press TV.

On Wednesday, Naji al-Issawi, a commander from the National Transitional Council (NTC) said one of the burial sites had been discovered in the Gargaresh district on the country’s coastline and some seven kilometers from the center of the capital, Tripoli, AFP reported.

He said the site contained nearly 200 corpses.

A second one bearing an estimated 700 bodies was uncovered in Birasta Milad, a rural area 10 kilometers away from downtown Tripoli, he added.

The official did not provide information on how the victims had died. However, a pathologist at the Gargaresh grave site said that more than two bodies had bullet-inflicted injuries and nearly 20 others had fractured skulls.

Reporters at the site said the burial had not been carried out long ago as the bodies had barely decomposed.

In late September, the bodies of more than 1,000 prisoners killed in 1996 by the former regime of the country’s fugitive previous dictator, Muammar Gaddafi, were unearthed from the site of Tripoli’s notorious Abu Salim prison.

Human Rights Watch has urged the NTC to stop digging up such graves, warning that lack of proper forensic techniques could make it impossible to identify the victims.