Hassan Al-Werfalli (Benghazi, Cairo)
Thirteen people, including a child, were killed and 30 wounded, in violent clashes that broke out on Thursday night and Friday between two armed groups in the Libyan capital, Tripoli, and renewed yesterday afternoon after a short lull.
For its part, the Presidential Council, in its capacity as the Commander-in-Chief of the Libyan Army, entrusted the Chief of General Staff of the Government of National Unity, Lieutenant-General Muhammad Al-Haddad, to end the clashes.
The 444th Brigade of the Libyan Ministry of Defense intervened yesterday morning to stop the clashes and placed its armed vehicles in a buffer zone on the Al-Fernaj roundabout (east of Tripoli), before being targeted by heavy fire.
Yesterday, clashes resumed, with heavy exchanges of fire in the east of the city near the campus of Tripoli University and the Tripoli Medical Center, where many people sought refuge during the night to escape the violence, according to the Libyan media.
Violent clashes erupted in the eastern neighborhoods of Tripoli shortly after midnight on Thursday, causing panic among residents in crowded streets and parks on a hot summer night.
The clashes resulted in “13 deaths, including three civilians, including an 11-year-old child, and 30 wounded,” sources told Al-Ittihad.
The armed clashes, which continued until this writing, disrupted flights at Maitika International Airport and diverted them to Misurata International Airport until further notice, with confrontations intensifying.
And ambulance spokesman Osama Ali announced that 60 students were stuck in university dormitories due to the clashes. Ambulances were sent to evacuate them to Tripoli Hospital.
Pictures and videos posted on social media showed dozens of vehicles abandoned by their owners to escape the shooting.
Libyan Airlines diverted its flights from Cairo, and Global Airlines from Benghazi, which was scheduled to land at Maitika Airport, near the site of the clashes, to Misurata, 250 kilometers east of Tripoli.
And the administration of Maitika Airport suspended air traffic until further notice.
In turn, the Presidential Council, in its capacity as the Commander-in-Chief of the Libyan Army, decided to assign the Chief of General Staff of the Government of National Unity, Lieutenant-General Muhammad Al-Haddad, to end the clashes between the fighting units in the capital, Tripoli, which erupted since mid-Thursday and renewed on Friday.
In a letter to Lieutenant-General Al-Haddad, he assigned the Presidential Council to secure the safety and security of Libyan citizens and public property, and to control the situation to ensure that things return to their normal course.
The Presidential Council, in its capacity as the supreme commander of the Libyan army, had called on the conflicting parties to cease fire and return to their headquarters immediately, and called on the Attorney General and the Military Prosecutor to open a comprehensive investigation into the causes of the clashes.
In the first government reaction to the clashes, the head of the Libyan unity government, Abdel Hamid Dabaiba, yesterday assigned the Minister of Local Government, Badr Al-Din Al-Toumi, to run the tasks of the Ministry of the Interior instead of Major General Khaled Mazen, as of Friday, July 22, until further notice.
In turn, the United Nations Support Mission in Libya called on all Libyan parties to exercise the utmost restraint and to address their differences through dialogue, expressing deep concern over “reports of civilian casualties as a result of the clashes that erupted between two armed groups last night in Tripoli.” Calling on the Libyan parties to abide by their obligations under national and international law to protect civilians and civilian infrastructure.
The UN mission called for an investigation into these events and for justice for the victims and their families, stressing that any act that endangers the lives of civilians is unacceptable, and urged all Libyans to do everything they can to preserve the fragile stability of the country at this sensitive time.
#Libyan #Presidential #assigns #Chief #Staff #restore #security #Tripoli