The most intense clashes for years rocked Tripoli for a second night and continued into Wednesday morning, witnesses in the Libyan capital said, after Monday’s killing of a major militia leader set off fighting between rival factions.
The United Nations Libya mission UNSMIL said it was “deeply alarmed by the escalating violence in densely populated neighborhoods of Tripoli” and urgently called for a ceasefire.
The latest unrest in Libya’s capital could consolidate the power of Abdulhamid al-Dbeibah, prime minister of the divided country’s Government of National Unity (GNU) and an ally of Turkey.
Libya has had little stability since a 2011 NATO-backed uprising ousted longtime autocrat Muammar Gaddafi and the country split in 2014 between rival eastern and western factions, though an outbreak of major warfare paused with a truce in 2020.
A major energy exporter, Libya is also an important way station for migrants heading to Europe and its conflict has drawn in foreign powers including Turkey, Russia, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates. Its main oil facilities are located in southern and eastern Libya, far from the current fighting in Triopli.
While eastern Libya has been dominated for a decade by commander Khalifa Haftar and his Libyan National Army (LNA), control in Tripoli and western Libya has been splintered among numerous armed factions.
Dbeibah on Tuesday ordered the dismantling of what he called irregular armed groups.
That announcement followed Monday’s killing of major militia chief Abdulghani Kikli, widely known as Ghaniwa, and the sudden defeat of his Stabilization Support Apparatus (SSA) group by factions aligned with Dbeibah.
The seizure of SSA territory in Libya by the Dbeibah-allied factions, the 444 and 111 Brigades, indicated a major concentration of power in the fragmented capital, leaving the Special Deterrence Force (Rada) as the last big faction not closely tied to the prime minister.