Airwars assessment
Three young sisters were reportedly killed by an LNA airstrike on the Fornaj neighbourhood of Tripoli.
Reuters reported: “Three children, all sisters, were killed, and their mother and a fourth sister wounded in an air strike that hit a house near a military intelligence camp in Libya’s capital on Monday, a Reuters reporter and health officials said.
Libya’s internationally recognized government blamed the strike on the forces of Khalifa Haftar, the commander based in the east of the North African country who had been trying to seize Tripoli in the west in a ground and air campaign since April 2019.
A Reuters reporter saw a heavily damaged two-storey house which witnesses said had been hit around midday. The family living there were among those displaced from the outskirts of Tripoli since the start of Haftar’s campaign, residents said.
One neighbor, Walid Khamis, said he had heard a single warplane before the strike. ‘It circled, dipped, then launched,’ he said.”
The Ambulance Services Libya said the father was also injured. Al Wasat also said three people were injured in addition to the killed sisters.
Libya Alahrar TV reported the highest toll of wounded civilians: “Minister of Health: 3 children were killed and 9 injured, including a girl whose leg was amputated by shelling of Al-Farnaj.”
The Libya Observer said in late November: “The report mentioned several violations like the killing of four children in their house by Haftar’s forces shelling in Al-Furnaj on October 14, airstrikes on a migrants’ center in Tajoura, where scores of civilians were killed in last June.”
UNSMIL heavily condemned the attack: “Once again, innocent children pay the ultimate price. An attack today ended, in the most horrible way, the lives of three innocent young girls of the same family, burying them under the rubble of a house razed by an airstrike in the al-Fernaj neighbourhood in Tripoli. Another young girl of the same family and the mother were injured in the airstrike, which was reportedly conducted by a fighter jet belonging to ‘LNA’ forces.”
The LNA spokesperson Ahmed Al Mesmari tweeted about the incident: “We did not target any civilian locations in Tripoli, Any target is decided based on confirmed and triple checked ground intelligence and are chosen very carefully.”
On December 23rd, the Libya Observer reported that the surviving sister – Shima Qushaira – was still being treated, and had had her left leg amputated.
The local time of the incident is unknown.
The victims were named as:
Family members (5)
- Wife of Ismail Qushaira Adult female injured
- Shima Qushaira Child female Daughter of Ismail Qushaira injured
- Daughter of Ismail Qushaira Child female killed
- Daughter of Ismail Qushaira Child female killed
- Daughter of Ismail Qushaira Child female killed
Summary
Sources (40) [ collapse]
Media
from sources (21) [ collapse]
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Geolocation notes (3) [ collapse]
Reports of the incident mention a ministerial building being struck in the neighbourhood of Al Fornaj (الفرناج). Analyzing audio-visual material from sources, we have narrowed the location down to these exact coordinates: 32.848811, 13.238981.