Battle rages for Libya’s capital; airport bombed
TRIPOLI/BENGHAZI, Libya (Reuters/AFP) — A warplane attacked Tripoli’s only functioning airport on Monday as eastern forces advancing on the Libyan capital disregarded international appeals for a truce in the latest of a cycle of warfare since Muammar Gaddafi’s fall in 2011.
Casualties were mounting in fighting that also threatens to disrupt oil supplies, fuel migration to Europe and wreck UN plans for an election to end rivalries between parallel administrations in the country’s east and west.
The eastern Libyan National Army (LNA) forces of Khalifa Haftar – a former general in Gaddafi’s army – said 19 of its soldiers died in recent days as they closed
in on the internationally recognized government in Tripoli.
A spokesman for the Tripoli-based Health Ministry said fighting in the south of the capital had killed at least 25 people, including fighters and civilians, and wounded 80.
Mitiga airport, in an eastern suburb, was bombed and closed, authorities said. The UN envoy to Libya, Ghassan Salame, condemned the air strike as a “a serious violation of humanitarian law.”
A spokesman for the LNA confirmed the strike, saying his force had not targeted civilian planes, only a MiG parked at Mitiga.
The closure left Misrata airport, 200 km (125 miles) to the east down the coast, as the closest option for Tripoli residents.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres day strongly condemned the military escalation near Tripoli and called for an immediate halt to the fighting in Libya.
Guterres “urges the immediate halt of all military operations in order to de-escalate the situation and prevent an all-out conflict,’’ said a UN statement.
He “strongly condemns the military escalation and ongoing fighting in and around Tripoli, including the aerial attack today by a Libyan National Army (LNA) aircraft against Mitiga airport.’’
Witnesses said on Monday afternoon the LNA had lost control of the old airport and withdrawn from positions on the airport road. Forces allied to the Tripoli administration were seen inside the airport, while clashes with the eastern forces were raging south of the airport.
On Sunday evening, LNA forces had moved up from the airport, coming as close as 11 km (7 miles) from the city center before retreating, residents said.
The government of Prime Minister Fayez al-Serraj, 59, is seeking to block the LNA with the help of allied armed groups who have rushed to Tripoli from Misrata in pickup trucks fitted with machine guns.