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Following the fall of Gaddafi in 2011, an absence of a strong central government resulted in conflicts between rival armed groups and militias. Fighting displaced hundreds of thousands of people and reduced towns and cities to rubble, littered with dangerous debris鈥攆rom unexploded mortars to cluster bombs.

Despite previous efforts by several humanitarian mine action organisations to remove these lethal remnants of war, there has not been the technical knowledge needed to make Libya鈥檚 decimated cities safe. As a result, families desperate to rebuild their lives have been unable to return to their homes.

Since establishing a presence in Libya in 2018, we have been able to draw on our 30 years of experience in mechanical clearance to make Libya鈥檚 urban centres safe. Unprecedented levels of destruction, including in residential areas with multi-story buildings, piles of rubble and collapsed buildings, demand innovative solutions, including adapting and armouring machines more commonly seen on civil engineering sites.

HALO has worked across the main cities of Tripoli, Misrata, Sirte and Benghazi, and currently has operations in Misrata and Sirte.

In June 2020, HALO鈥檚 survey teams began urgent work in the southern parts of Tripoli to assess the scale of explosives contamination in preparation of future clearance operations. A year of fighting in the city had left over 200,000 people displaced.

HALO operations are currently focused on the coastal cities of Sirte and Misrata. Sirte was the last bastion of Islamic State in North Africa until their defeat in 2016, and the city experienced some of the worst fighting of Libya鈥檚 civil war. In collaboration with the Libyan Mine Action Centre (LibMAC) and local authorities, we recruited and trained mechanical clearance teams in Sirte. One pile of rubble at a time, they spent several years clearing their own city of explosive debris鈥攎aking it safe for people to return home and rebuild their lives.

As of 2025 HALO now operates an explosive ordnance disposal call-out team in Sirte, which in the first quarter of the year responded to more than 80 call-outs by local people and police.

In Misrata, two HALO mechanised clearance teams have focused their work on making safe a large ammunition store close to the airport. Unplanned explosions at the site in 2016 and 2020 caused dozens of casualties. Libya's decaying and dangerous arms dumps have been blamed for supplying the weapons and ammunition that have destabilised much of the Sahel.

Hussain stayed in Sirte throughout the fighting, witnessing the pain and devastation as entire neighbourhoods were reduced to rubble. He became one of HALO鈥檚 first employees in the city and today guides our mechanical clearance teams as they sift through collapsed buildings to remove the bombs and explosives left behind. Once the neighbourhoods are declared safe, families will be able to return home and begin to rebuild their lives.