A Red Crescent worker has claimed more than 50 civilians have been killed in the past 24 hours in tribal warfare in southern Libya.

Moussa Bazama, an ambulance worker, says rockets, mortars and gunfire rocked residential areas in the desert town of Kufra, leaving scores killed and injured. Hundreds of families are fleeing toward northern cities.

For more than a week, the powerful Arab tribe of al-Zwia clashed with the African Tabu tribe in the border area where Libya, Chad and Sudan meet.

The two sides are old rivals. Tabu had always complained of discrimination under former Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi.

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