LIBYAN authorities uncovered nearly 50 bodies this week from two mass graves in the country’s south-eastern desert, officials said today.

This is the latest tragedy involving people seeking to reach Europe through the chaos-stricken north African country.

The first mass grave was found on Friday in a farm in the south-eastern city of Kufra, the security directorate said in a statement, saying that authorities took the bodies for autopsy.

Authorities posted images on Facebook showing police officers and medics digging in the sand and recovering dead bodies wrapped in blankets.

The al-Abreen charity, which helps migrants in eastern and southern Libya, said that some were apparently shot and killed before being buried in the mass grave.

A separate mass grave with at least 30 bodies was also found in Kufra after raiding a human trafficking centre, according to Mohamed al-Fadeil, head of the security chamber in Kufra. 

Survivors said that nearly 70 people were buried in the grave. 

Last year, authorities unearthed the bodies of at least 65 migrants in the Shuayrif region, 220 miles south of Tripoli.

Libya is the main transit point for migrants from Africa and the Middle East trying to make it to Europe. 

The country plunged into chaos after Nato intervened to help an uprising topple and kill long-time leader Colonel Muammar Gadaffi in 2011. 

Oil-rich Libya has been ruled for most of the past decade by rival governments in its east and west.

Human traffickers have benefited from more than a decade of instability, smuggling migrants across the country’s borders with six nations, including Chad, Niger, Sudan, Egypt, Algeria and Tunisia.

Rights groups and United Nations agencies have for years documented systematic abuse of migrants in Libya, including forced labour, beatings, rapes and torture.

The abuse often accompanies efforts to extort money from families before migrants are allowed to leave Libya on traffickers’ boats.