Powerful militias battling for the Libyan capital’s airport have agreed to a ceasefire, Tripoli said yesterday, after the government sought UN help to stop the country from becoming a “failed state.”
Libyan Foreign Minister Mohamed Abdelaziz asked the UN Security Council to dispatch experts to train Libya’s defense and police forces to ensure they can protect oil fields, airports and other vital sites.
The call came amid a surge of violence in the country with clashes between rival militias sparking fears of all-out civil war.
Photo: AFP
Tripoli’s mayor and leaders of battling militia said overnight that a truce had been agreed and that control of the international airport would be handed over to neutral forces.
The airport has been closed since fighting erupted on Sunday, when Islamist gunmen from the city of Misrata launched an attack on the facility, which has for the past three years been held by liberal, anti-Islamist fighters from Zintan, southwest of the capital.
Mokhtar Lakhdar, a commander for the Zintan forces, said that a truce had been agreed under the authority of the city council.
Dozens of rockets have been fired at the airport, badly damaging planes as well as the main terminal, but Lakhdar confirmed this had halted on Thursday night.
Ex-rebel fighters from Zintan and Misrata, east of Tripoli, both played a key role in the NATO-backed uprising that toppled former Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi in 2011. However, they have become fierce rivals in the deadly power struggle between armed groups that followed and which is now wracking the North African country.
Ahmed Hadeia, a spokesman for the Misrata fighters, said the ceasefire was “only around the airport” and did not include other sites controlled by the Zintan forces.
Misrata leaders said in a statement read out on Thursday on television that the fighting at the airport was a “battle of revolutionaries ... against followers of the old regime” of Qaddafi.
The clashes revived fears of the conflict spreading inside Tripoli itself, with official results still awaited from a June 25 election to the parliament previously dominated by Islamists.
“Should Libya become a failed state, kidnapped by radical groups and warlords, the consequences would be far-reaching and perhaps beyond control,” Abdelaziz told the Security Council as he requested UN help.
“We are not asking for military intervention,” he said. “We are asking for a team from the UN specialized in the field of security.”
Libya could become a “hub for attracting extremists,” feeding radicalism and the arms flow in the region and further afield in Syria, Abdelaziz said. “Don’t you think that such patterns that are indicative of heading toward a failed state would justify a stronger, more strategic engagement from the Security Council?”
The 15-member Security Council said it condemned the recent violence in Libya and said it made “it even more difficult for the Libyan authorities to govern effectively.”
The council would ask UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to look at the Libyan request for aid and present “options,” said Rwandan Ambassador to the UN Eugene-Richard Gasana, the current chairman of the council.
Abdelaziz said a new UN mission to help train the security forces would ensure Tripoli keeps control of oil revenue after militant groups seized oil terminals last year.
The blockades of the oil facilities that finally came to an end this month deprived Libya of more than US$30 billion in revenue over 11 months, he said.
CONDITIONS: The Russian president said a deal that was scuppered by ‘elites’ in the US and Europe should be revived, as Ukraine was generally satisfied with it Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday said that he was ready for talks with Ukraine, after having previously rebuffed the idea of negotiations while Kyiv’s offensive into the Kursk region was ongoing. Ukraine last month launched a cross-border incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, sending thousands of troops across the border and seizing several villages. Putin said shortly after there could be no talk of negotiations. Speaking at a question and answer session at Russia’s Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, Putin said that Russia was ready for talks, but on the basis of an aborted deal between Moscow’s and Kyiv’s negotiators reached in Istanbul, Turkey,
SPIRITUAL COUPLE: Martha Louise has said she can talk with angels, while her husband, Durek Verrett, claims that he communicates with a broad range of spirits Social media influencers, reality stars and TV personalities were among the guests as the Norwegian king’s eldest child, Princess Martha Louise, married a self-professed US shaman on Saturday in a wedding ceremony following three days of festivities. The 52-year-old Martha Louise and Durek Verrett, who claims to be a sixth-generation shaman from California, tied the knot in the picturesque small town of Geiranger, one of Norway’s major tourist attractions located on a fjord with stunning views. Following festivities that started on Thursday, the actual wedding ceremony took place in a large white tent set up on a lush lawn. Guests
Thailand has netted more than 1.3 million kilograms of highly destructive blackchin tilapia fish, the government said yesterday, as it battles to stamp out the invasive species. Shoals of blackchin tilapia, which can produce up to 500 young at a time, have been found in 19 provinces, damaging ecosystems in rivers, swamps and canals by preying on small fish, shrimp and snail larvae. As well as the ecological impact, the government is worried about the effect on the kingdom’s crucial fish-farming industry. Fishing authorities caught 1,332,000kg of blackchin tilapia from February to Wednesday last week, said Nattacha Boonchaiinsawat, vice president of a parliamentary
A French woman whose husband has admitted to enlisting dozens of strangers to rape her while she was drugged on Thursday told his trial that police had saved her life by uncovering the crimes. “The police saved my life by investigating Mister Pelicot’s computer,” Gisele Pelicot told the court in the southern city of Avignon, referring to her husband — one of 51 of her alleged abusers on trial — by only his surname. Speaking for the first time since the extraordinary trial began on Monday, Gisele Pelicot, now 71, revealed her emotion in almost 90 minutes of testimony, recounting her mysterious
RSS