Over 1,000 killed in battle for Tripoli: UN

Tripoli, July 9 (IANS/AKI) A total of 1,048 people, including 106 civilians, have died and over 5,500 injured in the three-month-old battle between warring militias fighting for control of Libya's capital Tripoli, the United Nations tweeted on Tuesday.

"As the Tripoli crisis enters its fourth month, the toll is 1,048 dead, including 106 civilians, and 5,558 injured, including 289 civilians," read the tweet from the UN World Health Organisation in Libya.

Among the dead are 53 migrants killed last Tuesday in an air raid on a detention centre in the Tripoli suburb of Tajoura, held by the internationally recognised government, which accused eastern warlord Khalifa Haftar's forces of carrying out the strike.

A total of 130 people were "severely injured" in the attack and six children were among the dead, according to the UN.

The fighting in Tripoli has forced more than 100,000 people to flee their homes and threatens to plunge chaos-stricken Libya into an all-out civil war.

The military escalation began in early April when Haftar's self-styled Libyan National Army began a ground and aerial offensive to wrest control of Tripoli from the UN-backed government.

Haftar's forces have since been bogged down in Tripoli's southern outskirts, where frontlines are frozen amid a stalemate in which neither of the warring sides has achieved a military victory.

The UN Security Council called Friday for a ceasefire in Libya in a statement that condemned the attack on the Tajoura migrant camp, urged a return to political talks and full respect of the arms embargo on Libya.