Militants' bodies left to rot for years, in symbol of Libya's disarray

14/1/2022 7:16

        Hundreds of bodies of Islamic State fighters killed in battle years ago are rotting in food freezers outside a Libyan city while authorities work out what to do with them, a grim reminder of the disarray a failed election was meant to address.
        
        Stored in a dusty corner of a compound southeast of Misrata, the 742 bodies were gathered by the internationally recognised government in 2016 from battlefields and informal graves, but there was no agreement on how or where they should be buried.
        
        Instead, Libya's conflict rumbled on, frontlines shifted, governments changed and financial crises came and went. The corpses, meanwhile, began to decompose, as power supplies to refrigerated containers were interrupted.
        
        The compound, run by a police unit and surrounded by fences and security cameras, reeks of decay. Weeds grow between the containers and an abandoned forensic tent stands under the burning sun.