Libyan warplane downed striking jihadists in Benghazi
BENGHAZI, Libya: A fighter jet of forces loyal to a Libyan military strongman was shot down on Saturday as it attacked jihadist positions in Benghazi, a military source said.
“A MiG-21 was shot down by a heat- seeking missile. The plane, targeted by terrorist groups, crashed in the district of Suq alHut but its pilot survived,” said Mohammad Ghunem, spokesman for the forces of strongman Khalifa Haftar, who is battling to oust jihadists from Libya’s second city.
A MiG-21 was shot down by a heat-seeking missile. The plane, targeted by terrorist groups, crashed in the district of Suq al-Hut but its pilot survived. Mohammad Ghunem, Khalifa Haftar forces spokesman
He said the jet was hit as it carried out a raid on the last bastion of ‘extremists’ in the city’s Mediterranean seafront district of Al- Saberi. The pilot, Adel Abdullah Bushisha, was able to eject and landed by parachute in the east of the city, he said.
Ghunem said the whole of eastern Libya was now under the control of Haftar’s self- declared Libyan National Army ( LNA).
“The terrorist groups fled their last stronghold in the western sector of Benghazi,” a source in the LNA’s special forces told AFP.
The source said 17 jihadists were killed in clashes and ‘many’ captured, and that LNA fighters also died in the operation.
A news agency run close to a parallel government in eastern Libya said LNA forces had “intensified their raids against the last bastions of the jihadist groups in Benghazi, some of whom tried to f lee during the night”. Persistent conf lict in Libya since the 2011 ouster of dictator Muammar Ghadafi allowed extremist organisations, including the Islamic State group, to gain a foothold in the country.
Benghazi, which fell to Islamist groups in 2014, has been the scene of deadly fighting between them and forces loyal to Haftar, who controls much of eastern Libya in defiance of the UN-backed unity government in Tripoli.
The LNA has managed to retake a large part of Benghazi, the birthplace of the 2011 revolution but it says jihadists are still present in the central districts of Al- Saberi and Suq al-Hut.
Among them is the Revolutionary Shura Council of Benghazi, an alliance of Islamist militias that includes alQaeda-linked Ansar Al- Sharia. — AFP