As foreign leaders prepare to meet in Brussels on March 24 to discuss the Russian invasion of Ukraine, some online have accused NATO of hypocrisy, sharing exaggerated statistics related to the alliance’s 2011 military intervention in Libya.
A network of Africa-based social media accounts asserts NATO launched more than 10,000 air raids on Libya that caused more than 500,000 civilian casualties. The posts include a photo purporting to show an airstrike in Libya.
“When NATO was questioned about civilian causalities and the death of Gaddafi children, they insisted that it was collateral damage and normal in wars,” reads a March 14 Facebook post from the page Happy Africans that generated more than 6,000 reactions in a week.
The claim comes amid calls from Ukrainian leaders for the U.S. to implement a no-fly zone over Ukraine, similar to what NATO enforced over Libya in 2011 to protect civilians from attacks during the country’s civil war.
Similar versions of the claim circulated on Facebook and Twitter, where it was shared by accounts such as Africa Archives and the African Hub in posts that generated more than 60,000 likes combined.
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