Geolocation
Airwars assessment
According to several local and international sources, LNA planes bombed a prison run by the Toubou tribe near Sabha, killing up to seven prisoners and wounding as many as nine more. There was disagreement between sources over how many of the victims were prison guards or civilians.
Al Jazeera put the death count at “four prison guards, including one of the commanders, all of them from Tabu. An unspecified number of other people were wounded.”
However, Reuters reported that “two guards and three prisoners were killed” – with “four more people wounded”.
Almarsad provided more detail on the event, reporting that “an airstrike on a Tebu-run security headquarters and prison in Sebha last night [Arpil 24th] killed at least five and injured nine and has been met with outrage by the local Tebu community.
In addition to three prison inmates and two prison guards killed, the currently unclaimed attack wounded eight other detainees and a guard. It destroyed large parts of the prison and vehicles outside”.
Y net news also put the death toll at five, though it didn’t state the combat status of the victims. The source added that “no one had claimed responsibility for the strike in Sabha, but forces aligned with a U.N.-backed government in Tripoli control a desert air base there that previously came under air attack from rivals allied with eastern commander Khalifa Haftar”.
According to Al Arabiya, in addition to “the deaths of four inmates and one guard”, there were “more than seventy prisoners wounded” – with the escape of more. Sources said that the identity of the warplane responsible was unclear: “The conflicting parties in the city are exchanging accusations about whether the aircraft belongs to the army (led by Marshal Haftar, a legislator from the House of Representatives) or affiliated with the UN-backed government headed by Fayez Sarraj in Tripoli.”
Al Wasat gave more information on the escapees, reporting that “80 people whose crimes ranged from murder to theft to looting and other crimes escaped detention as a result of the strike”.
Adam Abubaker put the civilian death toll even higher, at seven prisoners plus two guards.
The local time of the incident is unknown.
Summary
Sources (13) [ collapse]
Media
from sources (1) [ collapse]
Geolocation notes
Reports of the incident mention a prison being struck in the vicinity of Sabha (سبها) city, for which the generic coordinates are: 27.038804, 14.426567. Due to limited satellite imagery and information available to Airwars, we were unable to verify the location further.