May 14, 2018

Libya on Monday repatriated the remains of 20 Egyptian Coptic Christians executed by the Islamic State group in 2015 near the city of Sirte, the jihadists' former bastion in the country, an AFP photographer said.

The coffins were loaded at Misrata airport onto a Libyan Afriqiyah Airways cargo plane bound for Cairo.

The bodies of the 20 Egyptian men and one dark-skinned man whom a medical examiner believes to be from sub-Saharan Africa were found in October near Sirte.

The doctor, Othman Al-Zentani, said identifying the bodies was "not an easy task", as they had decomposed and the heads had been separated from the torsos.

DNA samples sent by families of the victims were vital to the identification process, Al-Zentani said.