Libya condemns killing of Ethiopian Christians by ISIL

THE FOREIGN minister of the UN-recognised government of Libya has condemned the purported killing of 28 Ethiopian Christians shown in a video released by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant’s (ISIL) Libyan arm.

Muhammad Dayri called the killings “barbaric” at a meeting of African and Asian leaders in Indonesia’s capital, Jakarta, yesterday.

“This is not the first time that these hordes of ISIL operate with tragic and horrible actions in Libya,” Dayri said, referring to the earlier mass murder of 20 Egyptian Christians and a Ghanaian by the group in February 2015.

Members of ISIL released the video purporting to show the killing of 28 Ethiopian men on Sunday. The footage switched between the shooting of 16 men in a desert area, and another 12 being beheaded on a beach.

It was not immediately clear who the captives were or what they were doing in Libya.

Redwan Hussein, an Ethiopian government spokesman, told Reuters that he could not immediately confirm the nationalities of the victims.