On 4 January, just after nine in the evening,
around 50 cadets were doing routine drills
at a military academy in the Libyan capital,
Tripoli.
The last thing they heard was an order to
turn and march.
A second later, CCTV captured an explosion
that detonated in the centre of the group
and left 26 young men dead or dying on the
parade ground.
Many were still teenagers.
None of them were armed.
Seven months later, no-one has claimed responsibility
for this attack.
And some believe that, because these recruits
were not strictly civilians, their deaths
are not worth investigating.
But the BBC has been looking into the strike
that killed these young men
and at the shrapnel that was left on the parade
ground.
This matters, because in this box are clues
that tell us not only what hit the cadets,
but who was behind this attack
and how major world powers are secretly fuelling
a war that has brought misery to Libya’s people.
One of those who witnessed the attack was
20-year-old Abdul Moeen, a student at the
academy and a friend of those who died.
CCTV captured Abdul Moeen as he walked out
of the academy into a scene of carnage.
The students, says Abdul Moeen, had come from
towns and villages across Libya.
Now, he wants to know who is responsible for
the death of his friends.
The BBC has now uncovered enough evidence
to answer Abdul Moeen’s question.
The academy sits in the South of Tripoli,
the base for Libya’s UN-recognised Government
of National Accord, or GNA.
At the time of the attack, Tripoli was under
siege from the Libyan National Army, or LNA,
which fights for a rival government based
in the eastern cities of Benghazi and Tobruk.
These two sides, both heavily backed by foreign
powers, have been fighting for control of
the country since 2014, and the LNA is usually
quick to take credit for its military triumphs.
But on 5 January, the LNA explicitly denied
that its forces had killed these cadets.
The LNA’s explanation was that these young
men had been killed by local shelling, or
perhaps by an attack from inside the academy.
We’re going to show you that this is not
true.
And we’re going to start with the box of
shrapnel.
This video, posted on 5 January, shows someone
collecting fragments of metal from the parade
ground.
Images filmed by the BBC show the same shrapnel
laid out on a table, and there’s enough
information here for us to piece together
this weapon.
These fins,
these bolt mechanisms
and this connection system
all match the components of a missile called
the Blue Arrow 7.
The Blue Arrow 7 is a Chinese-made air-to-surface
missile.
Our analysis found only one aircraft, active
in the attack on Tripoli, that is capable
of firing this weapon: a drone called the
Wing Loong.
Just three weeks before this strike, the UN
concluded that the Blue Arrow 7 "is ballistically
paired to be delivered by the Wing Loong II...and
by no other aviation asset identified in Libya
to date."
The Wing Loong is China’s equivalent of
the US Predator drone.
But while the export of US drones is regulated,
China, according to one US official, "has
been selling the hell out of its drones".
So who is buying the Wing Loong?
And who is flying it over Libya?
Over the past year, the fighting in Libya’s
streets has been matched by an escalating
drone war in its skies.
Ghassan Salamé, the former head of the UN
mission in Libya, described this as "possibly
the largest drone war theatre now in the world".
Both the GNA and the LNA use small, phone-operated
drones for reconnaissance and propaganda.
This video shows three Russian mercenaries
flying a handheld drone in support of their
LNA allies.
And this sequence shows a GNA-allied militia
using a similar drone to direct an artillery strike.
More sophisticated are the Russian-made Orlan
10s, used by the LNA: drones that carry thermal
imaging cameras that can pinpoint military
targets and even jam mobile phone signals.
Then there are the attack drones.
This is a Turkish-made Bayraktar TB2, which
has been used in support of the GNA since 2019.
The Bayraktar can cover 150km, carry a payload
of laser-guided missiles, and, invisible at
an altitude of 24,000 feet, loiter over its
targets for 24 hours.
But even that is nothing compared to the Wing
Loong II, an unmanned aircraft that can travel
some 1,500km, fire up to 12 missiles, and
still return to base.
From early 2019, these drones were used to
support the LNA’s attack on Tripoli, a year-long
siege that brought misery to the city’s
civilian population and contributed to the
displacement of 149,000 people.
The Wing Loong was the only drone operating
over Tripoli in January 2020 that could have
fired a Blue Arrow 7 into the cadets.
So where did it come from?
These are all the known Libyan air bases within
striking range of the academy.
But Wing Loong drones have only ever been
documented at two of these bases:
Al Jufra and Al Khadim.
Let’s look at Al Jufra first.
Satellite images show us that Wing Loongs
were operating from this base in August 2019.
But by September, the drones had vanished
from Al Jufra, perhaps in response to an attack
on the base earlier that summer, which left
these planes blazing on the tarmac.
They have never reappeared, and were not flying
from this base at the time of the strike on
the academy.
That leaves us with Al Khadim.
The base has been here for decades. But since
the fall of Libya’s former leader Muammar
al Gaddafi in 2011, Al Khadim has changed.
Starting in 2014, satellite imagery shows
a major redevelopment of this base.
So who’s paying for all this construction?
Where have these aircraft come from?
Which foreign power is backing the LNA’s
drone war on Tripoli?
These details give us a clue.
This is the first version of the Wing Loong
drone, visible at Al Khadim in 2016.
This is a UH-60 helicopter, what the Americans
call a Black Hawk.
These are AT-802 Air Tractors.
And this looks like a Hawk air defence system.
When this image was taken, there was only
one foreign player active in this war that
owned all four of these weapons: the United
Arab Emirates.
We also found an arms registry that lists
the weapons bought by the UAE in 2017.
It records the purchase of 15 Wing Loong II
drones and 350 Blue Arrow 7 missiles.
The UAE has previously denied military involvement
in Libya and claims to support the UN peace
process.
But the country’s Crown Prince, Mohammed
bin Zayed, is sympathetic to the LNA’s leader,
Khalifa Haftar.
And in 2019, the UN found that, by sending
Wing Loong drones and Blue Arrow 7 missiles
into Libya, the UAE had violated the UN arms
embargo, which exists to bring an end to this
conflict and which has been in force since
2011,
the same embargo that the UAE endorsed at
a summit in Berlin in January 2020.
Here, along with other world powers, the UAE
agreed to refrain from intervention in Libya’s war.
Three months later, the UAE’s Minister of
State for Foreign Affairs, Dr. Anwar Gargash,
was still tweeting his support for the UN’s
peace efforts.
But in the months leading up to the Berlin
meeting, the Wing Loong drones were taking
off from this runway.
And all the evidence suggests that among them
was the drone, which, on 4 January, fired
a missile into the unarmed cadets in Tripoli.
We have shown you the evidence of what hit
these cadets,
where it came from
and which foreign power operates from this
base.
But in early February 2020, the Wing Loongs
vanished from Al Khadim.
And when we began looking into where they’d
gone, we found clues to the involvement of
another shadow player in the game of drones.
This is a Chinese TV report from 2012 that
shows the command centre required to fly Wing
Loong drones.
We located the exact place in China where
this video was filmed, and found satellite
imagery taken in the same week it was shot.
This gives us a precise picture of what a
Wing Loong command centre looks like from
the air.
The presenter describes this building as the
satellite data link centre and this as the
drone’s control room.
If we look closely at images from Al Khadim,
we can see buildings, which exactly match
the dimensions of both the control room
and the data link centre that connects the
pilots to the drones via satellite.
The satellite dish gives this building a distinctive
profile, a profile we can see in the imagery
from Al Khadim.
We can also see these boxes, which look like
shipping containers.
What are they?
This video gives us a clue.
It’s a Chinese promotional film, showing
how a Wing Loong II is packed and transported.
The wings are laid lengthways along the body
of the aircraft.
And the boxes visible at Al Khadim are exactly
the right size to accommodate the flat-packed
drone.
On 31 January, 11 of these Wing Loong containers
were visible at Al Khadim.
But at some point in the first week of February,
they disappeared from the base.
At exactly the same time, between 4 February
and 7 February, an identical configuration
of containers appeared at an airbase near
Siwa, over the border, in Egypt.
This is what vanished from Al Khadim
and this is what appeared at Siwa.
Eleven boxes, identical in size and colour,
the same control rooms
and the same satellite data link centres.
The drones now stationed at Siwa appear to
be the same UAE drones that were previously
stationed at Al Khadim, safe in the Egyptian
desert, but still within striking range of
Libya’s capital, Tripoli.
And this is not the only evidence of Egypt’s
involvement in the Libyan war.
The BBC has found new evidence that another
Egyptian air base, Sidi Barrani, less than
80km from the Libyan border, is the destination
for military aircraft sent by the UAE.
These are Mirage 2000 fighter jets.
They’re painted in colours that are not
used by Egypt’s air force, but they exactly
match the jets flown by the UAE.
This is the same model of plane implicated
by the UN in the bombing of a migrant centre
East of Tripoli in July 2019, in which 53
people were killed.
Satellite imagery also reveals the presence
of a cargo plane called the Ilyushin 76.
We see these planes on the tarmac at Sidi
Barrani again and again, in March, in April,
and in June.
So what are they doing at a military air base,
and where might they have come from?
Flight tracking data offers a clue.
This is flight ZAV9511, also an Ilyushin,
recorded by radar as it came in to land at
Sidi Barrani on 25 June.
If we track this flight back, we find that
it came from the UAE.
And it’s not the only Ilyushin to have made
this trip.
We tracked multiple flights by Ilyushins that
head out of the UAE towards north-western
Egypt.
In almost every case, these planes vanish
from the radar just west of the Nile, still
at cruising speed and altitude.
We know that some of these planes landed at
Sidi Barrani because, in at least three cases,
the radar records the Ilyushins as they leave
this air base and head back towards the East.
We don’t know what was in these planes,
but these flights suggest an air bridge for
equipment or supplies between the UAE and
an Egyptian military base on the Libyan border.
Egypt’s President, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi,
was also present in Berlin, shaking Angela
Merkel’s hand and endorsing the UN’s efforts
to de-escalate the Libyan war.
Six months later, he was here at Sidi Barrani,
telling Egypt’s troops to be prepared for
action both inside Egypt’s borders and beyond.
We put these findings to the government of
the UAE.
They did not respond.
We also requested a response from Egypt.
They, too, did not reply.
The cadets who died in Tripoli in January
were not killed by a short-range mortar shell
or by an attack from inside the academy.
They were victims of a sophisticated, computer-game
war, which the United Nations has been powerless
to stop.
Just a few days after this attack, the former
head of the UN mission in Libya, Ghassan Salamé,
made his exasperation plain.
Take your hands out of Libya.
The country is suffering too much from foreign
interference in different ways.
Libya is not only an oil story.
Libya is not only a gas story.
Libya is not only a geopolitical story.
It is also a human story,
and people are suffering.
When Gaddafi was toppled in 2011, the cadets
who died here were just 10 or 11 years old,
and might have expected to grow up in a country
with some measure of peace and freedom.
Instead, they died in a conflict that has
now been grinding on for almost a decade.
And the evidence says they were killed by
a Chinese-made missile
fired from a drone that took off 750km away
in a base operated by a foreign power.
