TRIPOLI — At
least 16 people were killed and 52 wounded in fighting between armed groups in
Tripoli, the health ministry said Saturday, following the latest politically
driven violence to hit the
Libyan capital.
اضافة اعلان
The fighting began on Thursday night and
extended into Friday afternoon. On Saturday, violence erupted in Libya’s third
city Misrata, prompting the US embassy to warn of the risk of a wider flare-up.
Misrata is the hometown of both of the rival
prime ministers who are vying for control of what remains of a central
government.
The clashes pitted a militia loyal to the
unity government of Prime Minister Abdulhamid Dbeibah against another loyal to
his rival
Fathi Bashagha, named in February by a parliament based in the
country’s east, Libyan media reported.
US Ambassador Richard Norland called on all
political actors and their supporters among armed groups to stand down in order
to avoid escalation.
“Today’s clashes in Misrata demonstrate the
dangerous prospect that the recent violence will escalate,” he warned in a
tweet.
“Armed efforts either to test or to defend
the political status quo risk bringing Libya back to an era its citizens
thought had been left behind.”
The Tripoli clashes were between two armed
groups with major clout in the west of the war-torn country: the Al-Radaa force
and the Tripoli Revolutionaries Brigade.
Several sources said one group’s detention of
a fighter belonging to the other had sparked the fighting, which extended to
several districts of the capital.
On Friday, another group called the 444
Brigade intervened to mediate a truce, deploying its own forces in a buffer
zone before they too came under heavy fire, an AFP photographer reported.
Libya has been gripped by insecurity since a
NATO-backed uprising toppled and killed dictator Muammar Gaddafi in 2011,
leaving a power vacuum armed groups have been wrangling for years to fill.
Tensions have been rising for months in Libya
as the rival prime ministers face off, raising fears of renewed conflict two
years after a landmark truce ended a ruinous attempt by eastern military chief
Khalifa Haftar to seize Tripoli by force.
The dead were the first civilian casualties
of fighting in Tripoli since the 2020 truce.
Both groups involved in the Tripoli fighting
are nominally loyal to Dbeibah’s Government of National Unity, appointed last
year as part of a UN-backed peace process.
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