Some Maltese workers at Corinthia’s Bab Africa Hotel were seconds away from two terrorists who machine-gunned their way into the building in Tripoli last Tuesday, eventually killing 12 people.
“Some of the employees missed it all by a few seconds. It was that sort of a close shave, it was a stroke of luck that things did not end up worse,” a security source told The Sunday Times of Malta.
New details emerged yesterday, four days after an attack which symbolised the lawlessness which has gripped Libya in recent months.
It’s incredible how two people could do so much damage
Corinthia has its own security arrangement with a private firm specialised in conflict zones that plans contingency plans for these kinds of scenarios. The training is believed to have helped because the employees and some guests missed the gunmen by a matter of seconds.
The two attackers, whose exact identity or motive has still not been established conclusively, entered from the main entrance. They were unable to drive up to the front door because of bollards placed at the start of the drive leading to the front of the lobby.
However, they parked the vehicle adjacent to hotel grounds, got out, and opened fire on the guards outside.
While this was going on, staff and guests inside the lobby raised the alarm and were whisked to another location off the hotel grounds, the source said.
The men moved quickly inside the hotel, having apparent good knowledge of its layout.
“It is clear they knew exactly where they were going and what they were doing. It’s incredible how two people could do so much damage,” the source said.
Meanwhile, the Corinthia has been keeping a low profile. It has evacuated 13 Maltese staff from the hotel and the Palm City resort. Another four stayed behind to help clear the place, secure it against the elements – several windows were destroyed due to explosions – and take stock of the situation.
A Corinthia spokesman said: “It’s still early days to say what we are going to do in the future. We remain committed to Libya but at this point in time our priority is to assess the damage and help with the ongoing inquiry.”
There are two theories about the attackers. The first, supported by the Tripoli government, is that the assault was an attempted assassination attempt on the region’s self-declared Prime Minister Omar al-Hassi.
A representative of the Tripoli government in Malta, Hussin Musrati, said Mr al-Hassi was in the building at the time of the attack. However, this claim could not be ascertained independently, especially because high-level politicians had the custom of entering the hotel from the back entrance, often without most staff unaware.
If this were the case, the attack could be explained as reprisal by armed men affiliated or sympathetic with the rival Tobruk government, which recently saw the Deputy Foreign Minister Hassan Saghir, being abducted in Beida, in a similar attack.
The second theory is that the attackers are affiliates of IS, who were targeting a specialised American security company, as payback for the abduction from Tripoli of Abu Anas al-Libi, a wanted Al-Qaeda operative who was extracted by the CIA from Libya in 2013.
An IS sympathising group operating from Libya issued a message claiming responsibility and claiming the attack was payback. However, sources in Libya say it remains unclear if this is actually the case.
According to the Libya Herald, widespread gunfire around Tripoli in the past two days has been attributed to clashes between members of Daesh (a loose Arabic acronym for IS), who claimed responsibility for Tuesday’s carnage, and the Nawasi Brigade, the city’s principle enforcers who had broken the hotel siege and killed both attackers.
“It is proving very difficult to ascertain any piece of information with a high degree of certainty. This was always the case about Libya but now it’s on a whole new level,” the security source said.