Reuters
Tripoli/Benghazi
Militants claiming allegiance to Islamic State fought forces loyal to Libya’s two rival governments in the central city of Sirte and further east in Benghazi, a Libyan news agency and residents said yesterday.
In Sirte, IS militants killed five members of a force loyal to the government that controls Tripoli, a Tripoli-based news agency said. Two military sources said the attack near a power station on Sirte’s western outskirts appeared to be a suicide bombing, but gave no further details.
Fighters loyal to the Tripoli government, sent to Sirte from the western city of Misrata, have clashed several times with the militants and had set up checkpoints near the power station.
There was also heavy fighting between Islamists and forces loyal to Libya’s internationally recognised government, which is based in the east in Benghazi, after IS militants claimed a suicide attack on an army post in the port city.
Warplanes attacked suspected Islamist positions early yesterday, residents and military officials said. Gunfire and rocket propelled grenades could be heard in several districts.
Military officials had vowed air attacks on Islamists in response to a suicide bombing on Tuesday which killed seven people in Benghazi. Two more people had been killed by a rocket hitting residential buildings.
Militants claiming ties to IS have exploited the turmoil in Libya, where two governments and parliaments fight for control four years after the ousting of Muammar Gaddafi.
Taking advantage of the security vacuum, just as IS did in Syria and Iraq, the militants expanded recently in Sirte, taking over government offices, universities and a radio station.
The recognised government has been based in the east since a rival faction seized the capital in August and reinstated a previous assembly, challenging the elected parliament which is also based in the east.
Both governments rely on former rebels who helped topple Gaddafi and are now caught in a power struggle. In Benghazi the official premier Premier Abdullah al-Thinni has allied himself with general Khalifa Haftar who in May started his own fight against Islamists.
A UN official said yesterday international backers of Libya’s rival factions must pressure the warring groups to work out a political deal and help to choke off the supply of guns to the country.
“If we get a political agreement, the next thing is to convince the armed groups to basically back off,” Claudio Cordone, head of human rights at the UN Mission in Libya, told a news conference in Geneva.
Soldiers inspect a car at a checkpoint in Benghazi’s northern district of Sabri yesterday, the day after a suicide car bomb attack on an army checkpo
