5 Greek military personnel killed in Libya flooding rescue effort
People are always at risk in Libya. The state has long since collapsed. The unimaginable outcome of Hurricane Daniel proved it once again. Death is lurking everywhere, it can be sudden, and massive. The Victims are now the Greek military special forces personnel and most likely health personnel.
The information from the scene still remains unclear and confusing. Proof that on the ground the situation is just as disorganized and hazardous as the country has been since the civil war. At the same time, the flow and transfer of information from the Greek General Staff of National Defense proved to be poor. So there was no one on the ground to provide reliable information in the first place, probably not even in the Greek Pentagon to begin with.
There are questions that still cannot be answered. Evidence and testimonies are needed. But there are some that can be answered. Should we have sent a mission to Libya? Was it right to move the mission this way? Are the deaths the resolt of a traffic accident or a hostile terrorist act?
With all this in mind, why would you send a military mission to Libya in an uncontrolled and unsecured area of operation with MIT (Turkish Military Intelligence) controlling some areas and very active? Why are you sending Greece’s special paratrooper unit ETA when it’s a humanitarian mission. Where they well aremed? And why were they all gathered in an unprotected civilian unarmored vehicle? Hasn’t anyone heard that we never put all our “eggs” in one basket? The special paratrooper unit (ETA) that went to Libya is a Tier 1 special operations unit ( Elite Special Mission Units (SMU), also known as Tier 1 units, are deployed to conduct classified missions in reconnaissance, black operations, counter-terrorism, and unconventional warfare) just like the SAS, Army Delta, the Russian SSO, etc. You don’t send the cream of the crop of the Greek armed forces abroad without air and ground support and theatre awareness.
We had to send aid to Libya! Even if it is a failed state, especially because it is. There should have been a Greek presence in Libya for year ago instead of allowing Turkey to be engaged there for years. Greece is not Luxembourg, it cannot live in a closed environment, it must be engaged in the world around it. So this is not up for debate, aid was rightly sent to eastern Libya.
Did the Greek team move correctly? Things are not so simple here. Humanitarian missions traditionally move with locally provided or leased vehicles. But Libya is a special case, it is not a normal state. A security team could have been provided with Hummer vehicles, the mission could have been driven exclusively by Greeks with a local guide, and the team could have been broken into smaller vehicles and not all in one vehicle. There could have been aerial surveillance. There is an issue in the planning and direction of the operation.
What is behind the tragedy? All administrative and journalistic information, from major news networks, including Al Arabiya, speak of a traffic accident involving a head-on collision. They are talking about a collision between a vehicle carrying a family and the bus of the Greek mission. These are unconfirmed and unverifiable sources of information. Therefore, information from Libya about the scene on the ground is speculation. The images of charred vehicles are truly uncommon for a head-on collision. Ignition and explosion in vehicles after a collision may occur, but rarely on the level seen in photos of the scene. The “road” on which the “car accident” took place in Libya does not appear to be an expressway, so it is not possible for vehicles to collide at high speed and then explode their fuel. The Greek government must inform the public and the families of the dead responsibly about the incident.
Let’s keep cool, and learn more about what happened in Marawa. The safe return of all the injured comes first, followed by clear and unambiguous information about what happened. Are the Greek authorities doing everything they can to investigate the circumstances of the tragedy and to document the answers to all the questions that exist? Of the 19 people on the Greek humanitarian mission in Libya, 5 are dead and 13 injured, 5 of them in critical condition. What exactly happened? Sabotage or accident? Will we learn the truth? Our deepest condolences to the families of the deceased! Speedy recovery to our wounded!
