Tajoura detention center, located close to a military depot, was first hit by shelling on the night of May 7, when shrapnel narrowly missed a baby. The UN Refugee Agency called for the detention center to be evacuated.
But two months later, 600 men, women, and children were still locked up in Tajoura when it was hit by two airstrikes on the night of July 2. At least 53 people were killed—making this the deadliest incident for civilians since the conflict began.
“The first airstrike was near to the hangar where I was,” says Faduma, the woman in the red coat. “When it happened, the doors were closed and it was dark. No one came to open the doors, no one came to help us.”
In the ensuing panic, Faduma says that a number of people broke out of the hangar and tried to escape, but were rounded up by guards and locked up again. “People tried to escape,” she says, “then the policemen chased the people and brought them back to a hangar and they shut the people in. Where they shut the people was where the second bomb struck. You couldn’t see anything, just rocks, and blood.”
According to official reports, the victims of the airstrike that hit the men’s hangar were mainly men, but the women’s hangar was also damaged by the blast. Faduma says she was wounded and taken to a hospital along with another woman, Bilan.
“All the people who died, I knew them”
Fifty-three people are known to have died in Tajoura that day, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), but the survivors rescued by Ocean Viking report that the number of deaths was almost double that.
“Many people died in Tajoura—more than 100,” says Hassan. “In that hangar there were more than 105 people. All the people who died, I knew them.”
After being discharged from the hospital, both Faduma and Bilan were taken to the UN’s gathering and departure center (known as the GDF) in Tripoli, which was set up in 2018 as a transit center for vulnerable people waiting to be relocated. They were lucky—others had to fend for themselves on the streets of Tripoli. Faduma stayed in the GDF for four months, but eventually she too had to leave. Hassan describes how desperate they all felt. “No help, no work—they don’t know where to go, they don’t know where to move,” he says.