CAIRO (AP) - The family of a slain Libyan human trafficker attacked a group of migrants in a town that recently changed hands amid the fighting over the country's capital, killing 26 Bangladeshi and four African migrants, the Tripoli government said Thursday.
There was scant information about the attack in the statement issued by the U.N.-supported government in Tripoli. The slayings underscore the perils migrants face in Libya, where violence and lawlessness have created a haven for smugglers to operate along the North African country's coastline.
The statement said migrants had killed a local trafficker in the desert town of Mizdah, near Tripoli, allegedly prompting his family to take revenge and kill the 30 migrants. Eleven migrants were wounded in the rampage, it added, and taken to a hospital in the western mountain town of Zintan.
The Interior Ministry in Tripoli issued an arrest warrant for the suspected attackers, the government also said.
It wasn't immediately clear where the migrants were at the time of the attack. There were also no details about the timing of the attack in Mizdah, which was recently seized by Libya's east-based forces under the command of Khalifa Hifter.
Vincent Cochetel, the U.N. refugee agency's special envoy for the Mediterranean, posted on Twitter that such attacks "will never stop as long as impunity for known human traffickers continues to prevail."
Migrants fleeing poverty and conflict in Africa and the Middle East typically pass through Libya on their way to Europe, departing Tripoli's rocky coast in inflatable dinghies.
The Libyan coast guard, trained by the EU to keep migrants from reaching European shores, intercepts boats at sea and returns them to Libya, where many migrants land in detention centers rife with torture and abuse.
On Thursday, the coast guard rescued 211 migrants, including women and children, in the Mediterranean Sea and brought them back to Libya's shore, said Safa Msehli, a spokeswoman for the International Organization for Migration.
The number of those fleeing Libya's conflict has sharply risen in recent weeks, according to the U.N. migration agency, as the battle for control of the capital intensifies. In the past week alone, nearly 700 migrants were stopped and returned to detention facilities.
Militias loosely allied with the Tripoli government have been defending the country's capital from a year-long offensive by Hifter's forces trying to capture it.