About 500 protesters broke into the grounds of Libya’s parliament building on Sunday to demand an end to violence in Bani Walid, a former stronghold of late Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi that is being shelled by militiamen from a rival town.
Militias, many from Misrata and aligned with the Libyan Ministry of Defense, have been shelling the hilltop town of 70,000 people for several days. State news agency LANA said on Sunday that 22 people had been killed and 200 wounded in the fighting.
“We are here to demand the government find a peaceful solution for the tribal war that is happening in Bani Walid,” protester Nasser Ehdein said.
Photo: Reuters
Libya’s new rulers have held elections, but have struggled to impose their authority on a country awash with weapons a year after Qaddafi was killed and the fighting in Bani Walid underscored how tenuous their control remains.
In a country where rumors abound, there were also conflicting reports over the weekend about the fate of Qaddafi’s son Khamis, and that of the late autocrat’s former spokesman.
In Tripoli, an unarmed group of male and female protesters forced their way past security guards at the gates of the grounds of the parliament buildings, chanting: “There is no God but God, and [Libyan] President [Mohammed] Magarief is God’s enemy.”
Security forces fired rounds into the air as they held their positions at the doors of the building, while elected members of the General National Congress met inside.
Ehdein said most of the protesters were residents of Tripoli who had family in or hailed from Bani Walid. This is the second time protesters have broken into the grounds of the assembly since it took power in the summer.
The first time was on Oct. 4, when a group of protesters who believed their town was underrepresented in a proposed Libyan government stormed the assembly as it prepared to scrutinize the prime minister-elect’s nominations.
In the port city of Benghazi, anger boiled over on Sunday night when about 400 unarmed, but angry protesters stormed the grounds of private Libyan satellite channel Libya al-Ahrar.
The protesters demanded that the channel air photographic evidence that Qaddafi’s son Khamis had been killed in battle. Libyan officials had announced he had been killed in fighting in Bani Walid, but that has not been confirmed.
Demonstrators said they were furious over what they deemed a false rumor, saying it had helped fuel violence in Bani Walid and stir up tribal enmity.
Bani Walid was one of the towns that remained loyal to Qaddafi the longest. It remains isolated from the rest of Libya and former rebels say there are still pockets of support for the old government there.
In Bani Walid itself, 140km south of Tripoli, militia leader Abdelkarim Ghomaid said fighting was in full swing.
“The shelling is coming from all sides,” he said by telephone.
A Bani Walid resident said by telephone: “Fighting is continuing today. There is smoke rising over certain parts of the city.”
Outside Bani Walid, hundreds of vehicles lined up in the village of Weshtata, 80km from Tripoli, waiting to be checked by government forces as families fled the fighting.
“We are escaping the danger of the rockets, the shrapnel and the deaths inside. There hasn’t been electricity for days,” said one man with his family in a pick-up truck.
A feud between Misrata and Bani Walid was inflamed by the death of rebel Omran Shaban after he was detained for two months in Bani Walid. Shaban, from Misrata, was the man who found Qaddafi hiding in a drain pipe in Sirte on Oct. 20 last year. Libya’s congress ordered the defense and interior ministries to find those responsible for abducting Shaban and suspected of torturing him. It gave Bani Walid a deadline to hand them over.
Hundreds of families have fled the fighting in Bani Walid to Tarhouna, about 80km away, where a statement from the prime minister’s office on Saturday said militias had captured former Qaddafi spokesman Moussa Ibrahim.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion