Reuters has revealed that a UN confidential report documents with evidence the presence of 1200 mercenaries from Russian Wagner Group in Libya, fighting for Khalifa Haftar's forces.
The 57-page report by independent sanctions monitors, submitted to the UN Security Council Libya sanctions committee, said the Russian Wagner Group deployed forces in specialized military tasks, including sniper teams.
The sanctions monitors said that while they could not independently verify the scale of the deployment to Libya by Wagner Group, "based on open source reporting and the limited sightings assesses that the maximum number of individual private military operatives deployed to be no more than 800 to 1,200."
They added that their deployment had acted as an effective force multiplier for Haftar.
Meanwhile, the spokesman for the UN Secretary General said in a press conference Tuesday that the UN was concerned about the presence of mercenaries in Libya, adding that Antonio Guterres had talked publicly more than once about it, saying Libya doesn't need mercenaries but it needs a reconciliation that paves the way for political settlement.
Back in November 2019, the Libyan Interior Ministry said Haftar had given Libyan military bases to Russian Wagner Group mercenaries, including Jufra and Al-Watiya airbases, to use them for attacks that endanger people's lives and that their presence hindered the counter-terrorism efforts.
