Deaths and displacements yesterday mounted in splintered Libya as eastern forces sought to push into the capital, Tripoli, disregarding global appeals for a truce in the latest of a cycle of warfare since former Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi’s fall in 2011.
The fighting threatens to disrupt oil supplies, fuel migration to Europe and wreck UN plans for an election to end rivalries between parallel administrations in east and west.
The eastern Libyan National Army (LNA) forces of Khalifa Haftar — a former general in Qaddafi’s army — said 19 of its soldiers had died in the past few days as they closed in on the internationally recognized government in Tripoli.
Photo: AFP
A spokesman for the Tripoli-based Ministry of Health said fighting in the south of the capital had killed at least 25 people, including fighters and civilians, and wounded 80.
The UN said 2,800 people had been displaced by clashes and many more could flee, though some were trapped.
“The United Nations continues to call for a temporary humanitarian truce to allow for the provision of emergency services and the voluntary passage of civilians, including those wounded, from areas of conflict,” it said in a statement.
Haftar’s LNA, which backs the eastern administration in Benghazi, took the oil-rich south of Libya earlier this year before advancing fast through largely unpopulated desert regions toward the capital, but seizing Tripoli is a much bigger challenge.
It has conducted airstrikes on the south of the city as it seeks to advance along a road toward the center from a disused former international airport.
However, the government of Libyan Prime Minister Fayez al-Serraj, 59, is seeking to block the LNA with the help of allied armed groups who have rushed to Tripoli from nearby Misrata port in pickup trucks fitted with machine guns.
A correspondent in the city center could hear gunfire in the distance southward.
Serraj has run Tripoli since 2016 as part of an UN-brokered deal boycotted by Haftar. His Tripoli government has reported 11 deaths in the past few days, without saying on which side.
UN envoy Ghassan Salame yesterday met Serraj in his office in Tripoli to discuss “this critical and difficult juncture,” the UN’s Libya mission said.
The violence has jeopardized a UN plan for a conference on Sunday and Monday to plan elections and end anarchy that has prevailed since the Western-backed toppling of Qaddafi eight years ago.
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees expressed anxiety about thousands caught in cross-fire and detention centers in conflict zones in a “rapidly deteriorating humanitarian situation.”
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