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By Callum Paton.
Tripoli, 12 March 2014:
Derna Local Council has said it fears the remaining expatriates in the town will now leave . . .[restrict]following the murder of an Indian doctor employed at the town’s hospital.
A source close to the Derna Local Council told the Libya Herald, speaking on condition of anonymity, that the council was deeply concerned by the killing. “We are fearful that all foreigners in Derna will leave because of the security situation,” he said. “This is a big problem and a bad sign.”
He said that Derna University and Derna Local Hospital in particular were reliant on foreign staff and would struggle without them. He added that many foreigners, particularly Iraqis, had fled Derna following the kidnapping and murder of Iraqi university lecturer Hamid Khalf in November. A video of Khalf’s alleged execution was circulated on social media but then widely discredited as fake. The source said his whereabouts were still unknown.
The Indian doctor, named as Irfan Ali Amin, disappeared on Sunday evening and was found dead on Monday morning. He had been shot several times.
The Indian Ambassador to Libya, Anil Tringunayat, told this paper he was alarmed by the killing of the young man who, he said, was representative of the 1,600 Indian doctors that had come to Libya to help its people during and after the revolution.
Tringunayat said Amin was one of six Indian doctors working at Derna hospital and that as far as he was concerned he had been held, with his colleagues, in high esteem.
He added that while he had been in contact with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Interior that there had been very little information offered concerning the circumstances of the killing and that he had little hope the perpetrators would be found.
Amin’s body is currently at Derna hospital and will be taken to Benghazi before it is returned to his home in Kashmir.
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