Clashes erupted in the centre of Libya’s main eastern city Benghazi yesterday as pro-government forces pushed to take the port district from Islamist militants, and seven soldiers were killed, witnesses and military officials said.
The fighting mirrors a wider struggle in the oil producing North African state where two governments and parliaments, allied to rival armed groups, are vying for control almost four years after Muammar Gaddafi fell to an armed uprising.
Backed by forces led by General Khalifa Haftar, army special forces in mid-October launched an offensive against Islamists in Benghazi, expelling them from the airport area and from several camps the army had lost during the summer.
Army forces have since been trying to retake the port area and two other districts where pro-government forces say fighters from the militant Islamist Ansar al-Sharia group are holed up.
The port, the main gateway for food imports into eastern Libya, has had to close.
Army forces trying to take port area where fighters from militant Islamist group are holed up
Yesterday morning, army vehicles advanced on the Corniche road towards the port gate and a nearby court building. Soldiers took over several government buildings such as a passport office heavily damaged in earlier fighting.
Heavy gunfire continued after nightfall. The court is famous as the place where the 2011 uprising against Gaddafi started with peaceful protests against his jailing of many opponents. Army forces in eastern Libya are loyal to internationally recognised Prime Minister Abdullah al-Thinni, who was forced to leave the capital Tripoli in the west in August for the eastern city of Bayda when a group called Libya Dawn seized the capital.
The new rulers in Tripoli set up their own government and parliament, but these have not been recognised by the United Nations. Both sides have fought each other on several fronts.
Libya has failed to build up a national army and efficient state institutions since the end of Gaddafi’s one-man rule, and the country is now effectively dominated by former rebel brigades who have carved out competing fiefs.
Meanwhile Libya’s only commercial flight link to mainland Europe was severed yesterday when the state carrier said its foreign partner had pulled out of the country after a deadly attack last week on a Tripoli hotel.
The carrier, Afriqiyah, had only just restarted the route to Duesseldorf in Germany last month. The Georgia-based company that provided the planes and crews had decided to quit Libya for security reasons, Afriqiyah said in a statement.
On January 27, gunmen stormed the luxury Corinthia hotel in Tripoli and killed around nine people, including five foreigners. The victims included a French national working for another Libyan airline, Buraq, according to a Libyan official. Libyan websites said a crew of three were killed.
Buraq announced the next day that it had suspended all flights for two days. It has not yet resumed regular operations, but has planned a flight to Istanbul today to pick up stranded passengers. Increasingly isolated because of violence and turmoil, Libyan airlines are subject to a flight ban by the EU which they can only circumvent by contracting firms operating planes registered in the EU.
Foreign airlines stopped flying to Libya last July when a faction called Libya Dawn attacked a rival group controlling Tripoli’s main airport, taking control of the capital after a month of fighting. The airport and some 20 planes were damaged during the fighting, officials have said.