Syrian mercenaries film themselves in Tripoli and Gharyn as total rises to 10,000
A Syrian human rights organization regularly quoted by the United Nations and the international media as the authority on human rights violations in Syria, today said that it had documented the arrival of over 10,000 Syrian mercenaries to Libya.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said that an intake of 500 Syrian mercenaries had been airlifted from Turkey to Libya, bringing the total figure of Syrian mercenaries in western Libya to 10,100, including a group of non-Syrians as nearly 3,400 others had arrived in from Syria to Turkey to undergo pre-deployment military training.
The Observatory warned that some 200 minors were spotted among the Syrian mercenaries sent by the Erdogan regime to back the Muslim Brotherhood-led Government of National Accord (GNA). The organization said it had documented the death of 318 Syrian mercenaries during combat operations against the Libyan National Army (LNA) in Tripoli.
Libyan social media outlets are awash with daily videos featuring Syrians during military action across Tripoli front-lines. Most of those videos are published by the Syrians themselves in addition to others recovered from smartphones belonging to those killed in the fighting. The LNA has been publishing videos documenting Syrian mercenaries captured while fighting alongside the GNA. It is worth noting that the Syrian mercenaries in Libya hail from Syria’s non Arab Turkmen minority which dominates the border region between Turkey and Syria.
Today, the Observatory has also shared a video (below) showing Syrian mercenaries filming themselves inside the Tripoli’s Hamza Barracks from which the LNA had withdrawn yesterday.
A second video that had also surfaced on social media today, in which Syrian mercenaries were seen filming themselves unloading boxes of military equipment in the Nahr Barracks in the Libyan city of Gharyan (80 km south of Tripoli). Within few hours, the same location had been struck by the Libyan Air Force, with eyewitnesses saying that that sounds of explosions had lasted for over two hours inside the targeted barracks. Back home in Syria, media outlets affiliated with the anti-Erdogan factions regularly identify the mercenaries and their commanders who had been featured in the footage coming out of Tripoli.