The "Search and Identification of Missing Persons" in Libya announced today, Sunday, the exhumation of 42 bodies belonging to unidentified persons from a mass grave in the eastern city of Sirte.
This comes as a continuation of the discovery of mass graves in the city, which was under the control of the Islamic State.
The government authority said in a statement that a notification was received to the prosecution that there is a cemetery inside a school, and the authority's teams have exhumed 42 unidentified bodies and transferred them to the city hospital.
The unidentified bodies were reburied after samples were taken with the aim of identifying their owners later, according to a statement by the commission.
Excavations of mass graves are repeated in the city of Sirte (450 kilometers east of the capital, Tripoli), which was under the control of the Islamic State and made a stronghold between 2015 and 2016.
In December 2018, a mass grave was found near Sirte containing the remains of 34 Ethiopian Christians, more than 3 years after the organization published a video showing its fighters executing at least 28 men it said were Ethiopian Christians.
In early August, 56 people out of 320 members of the organization appeared for the first time before a court in Misrata (200 km east of Tripoli) to be tried on charges of participating and joining a terrorist organization.
The organization, estimated at several thousand, took control of the city of Sirte in June 2015, taking advantage of the division and security chaos in Libya since the fall of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.
The militants defended the city for months, using urban guerrilla tactics, human shields and land mines.
The battles to regain control of Sirte killed more than 700 members of the forces affiliated with the Tripoli government at the time, and wounded more than 3,000.