At least 27 people have died in Tripoli, as reported by a group of doctors on Wednesday, after armed clashes between two militias in various neighborhoods of the Libyan capital, which have left residents trapped in their homes.
The Libyan Center for Emergency Medicine and Support, a medical group that is deployed in disasters and humanitarian conflicts, said more than 100 people were also injured in the clashes, without disclosing how many victims were civilians.
The clashes, the worst military escalation this year, began on Monday night, after the head of one of the militias, Brigade 444, Mahmoud Hamza, was detained by another militia, the Special Deterrence Forces (Rada). .
The 444 Brigade claimed to have taken full control of the Ain Zara area on the outskirts of Tripoli and prevented Rada members from entering.
On Tuesday, the Libyan Ministry of Health had called for a two-hour truce to evacuate people trapped in combat zones and allow hospitals to receive blood donations.
The OPSGroup, an aviation industry organization, said on Monday that a large number of planes had left Tripoli due to the clashes. Flights to the Libyan capital are being diverted to the neighboring city of Misrata.
The two militias, which control Tripoli, support the Prime Minister of the Government of National Unity, Abdelhamid Dbeiba, against a parallel executive based in Benghazi that administers the east of the country, and the Rada is linked to the Presidential Council.
The President of the Presidential Council, Mohamed Manfi, in his capacity as Supreme Commander of the Army, urged “all belligerent parties to immediately cease hostilities.”
The request was joined by the UN special mission in Libya, the European Union and the embassies of France, the United States and Great Britain.
The current military escalation is the worst experienced this year, after a relative calm, after a “road map” was advanced to call general elections and put an end to the long and unstable transition process that began after the fall of the dictator Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.
Source: TSF
