Libyan army troops and armed residents clashed with Islamist fighters in the eastern port of Benghazi yesterday, killing at least four people, a day after a renegade former general who backs the army vowed to retake the city from the militants.

Libya’s second largest city is caught up in a chaotic struggle for control between an alliance of Islamist militia groups and the army, which is backed by forces loyal to former general Khalifa Haftar.

Gunfire could be heard in several districts from early morning, residents said. At least four soldiers were killed and eight wounded, a figure likely to rise, hospital medics said.

Fighters from one Islamist group, Ansar al-Sharia, attacked the camp of an army tank battalion, one of the last bases still controlled by government forces since militants drove army special force units out of Benghazi months ago.

War planes, belonging to forces allied to Haftar, could be heard bombing suspected Islamist positions.

In the evening rockets hit a chemicals storage tank of Libyan oil services firm al-Jouf outside the eastern Benghazi city, an oil official said.

Residents said that planes had bombed suspected Islamists positions in the port city throughout the day. The rockets, probably from a plane, hit a storage tank of chemicals used to clean pipelines, Saad al-Fakhri, deputy head of Libya’s oil workers’ union, told Reuters. Civil defence teams extinguished the fire at the tank west of Benghazi. The site is at least 100 km from Zueitina oil port, the closest export terminal in the oil-rich east.

Benghazi is caught up in a chaotic struggle for control

On Tuesday, Haftar had promised to “liberate” Benghazi. Prime Minister Abdullah al-Thinni and Haftar’s spokesman Mohamed El Hejazi said the army had seized the February 17 camp belonging to the “Majlis al-Shura” forces, an umbrella group of Islamist militias.

“The Majlis al-Shura forces are fleeing from the military confrontation,” Thinni told the UAE-based Sky News Arabia TV channel. “The Benghazi area is now safe.”

It was impossible to verify the statement immediately but a Reuters reporter could hear gunfire in the area of the camp, suggesting that a battle was not yet over.

Three years after the fall of veteran strongman ruler Muammar Gaddafi, the plight of Benghazi illustrates the central government’s inability to control rival armed factions who once fought Gaddafi and now battle over the post-war spoils.

Libya’s neighbours and Western powers are worried that the Opec member is heading for full-blown civil war as the weak government is unable to challenge brigades of heavily armed former rebels who now defy the state’s authority.

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