BRADLEY KLAPPER | WASHINGTON
The death toll in Libya after more than two months of violence could reach as high as 30,000, an Obama administration official said on Wednesday.
Gene Cretz, the US ambassador to Libya, said it is very hard to gauge how many people have died in strongman Moammar Gaddafi’s crackdown on protesters and the subsequent fighting between rebels and pro-government forces.
But he said that US officials have seen figures ranging from 10,000 to 30,000. “I don’t think we’re probably going to get an accurate number until we really get more hands-on experience on the ground,” Cretz told reporters at the State Department in Washington. “We just have no sense of the scale of this thing until it’s over.”
Cretz said the US keeps getting reports of “bodies that have been uncovered on the beach” as it maintains communication with contacts it established when it operated an embassy in Libya.
The death toll in Libya after more than two months of violence could reach as high as 30,000, an Obama administration official said on Wednesday.
Gene Cretz, the US ambassador to Libya, said it is very hard to gauge how many people have died in strongman Moammar Gaddafi’s crackdown on protesters and the subsequent fighting between rebels and pro-government forces.
But he said that US officials have seen figures ranging from 10,000 to 30,000. “I don’t think we’re probably going to get an accurate number until we really get more hands-on experience on the ground,” Cretz told reporters at the State Department in Washington. “We just have no sense of the scale of this thing until it’s over.”
Cretz said the US keeps getting reports of “bodies that have been uncovered on the beach” as it maintains communication with contacts it established when it operated an embassy in Libya.
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