Mitiga airport reopens to air traffic after shelling

CAIRO: Libya’s Mitiga airport reopened to air traffic on Saturday ater being closed for several hours following shelling, the airport authority said on its Facebook page.

Mitiga is the only working airport in the Libyan capital Tripoli, which has been under atack by the eastern-based Libyan National Army, commanded by Khalifa Hatar.

Libya’s Government of National Accord has protested at what it said were “untruths” in UN envoy Ghassan Salame’s latest report on the conflict in the North African country.

Fayed al-sarraj, head of the Un-recognised GNA which is based in Tripoli, summoned Salame on Wednesday “to deliver a protest note over untruths” in his report to the United Nations Security Council, it said.

Salame, in a video conference on Monday, raised the alarm over “the increasing frequency of atacks on Mitiga”, the Libyan capital’s only functioning airport.

“Several of these atacks have come perilously close to hiting civilian aircraft with passengers on board,” he said.

Salame urged “the authorities in Tripoli to cease using the airport for military purposes and for the attacking forces to halt immediately their targeting of it”.

Mitiga has closed several times over the past four months because of a batle for Tripoli between GNA forces and fighters of military strongman General Khalifa Hatar.

Nearly 1,100 people have been killed since Hatar launched the offensive against the capital on April 4, according to the World Health Organization.

Last week, Libyan military strongman Hatar’s forces said they carried out an air strike last week on a makeshift hospital near Tripoli that killed five medical personnel.

“We conducted an air raid targeting a field hospital south of Tripoli on Saturday, used as cover by terrorists to avoid being targeted,” said a spokesman for Hatar’s self-styled Libyan National Army. Hatar’s forces launched an offensive in April to try to wrest Tripoli from forces backing the internationally-recognised Government of National Accord.

PRO-GNA armed groups have weathered the initial onslaught and fighting has since remained deadlocked on the southern outskirts of the city, with both sides resorting to air strikes.

The GNA said the air strike on the field hospital south of Tripoli was carried out by “a Hatar warplane”.