Gunmen hit Libya’s national oil company
Several killed; assailants’ motive was not clear.
David D. Kirkpatrick and Suliman Ali Zway
Gunmen stormed the headquarters of Libya’s national oil company in Tripoli on Monday, setting off explosions, taking hostages and spraying gunfire, leaving several people dead or wounded before forces aligned with the government took control of the building. The identity and motives of the assailants were not clear.
The oil company said two of its employees had been killed and there were reports of two gunmen killed, putting the total number of dead at four. But an employee who escaped the assault said he believed that as many as six people had been killed, including three of the assailants.
The attack follows a month of escalating violence among rival militias competing for control of Tripoli, the capital, where a U.N.-backed government has its headquarters but remains largely powerless. Last week, clashes killed more than 60 people.
Any attack on the national oil company is significant because petroleum is the lifeblood of the Libyan economy and competition for control of the country’s vast oil reserves is at the heart of the often violent struggle for power there. Cuts in oil revenue because of the fighting have driven Libya into a severe financial crisis with the government failing to meet public payrolls, long lines forming at banks and inflation soaring.
The employee who escaped, Baha Elddin, said six men armed with “machine guns” had fought their way into the building. Three had blown themselves up, he said, and three others had climbed the stairs to the upper floors.
Elddin said that local militia fighters had responded to the incursion by besieging the building and that their gunfire may have caused the most casualties.
“They started shooting at the assailants inside while the assailants threw grenades down on them from the second floor,” Elddin said in a telephone interview. “I think that most injuries happened because the respondents were shooting in.”
On Facebook, a government-aligned militia described the assault as a “terrorist attack” and the assailants as “suicide bombers.”
Speaking in the early afternoon in Tripoli, Elddin said that the battle had ended with as many as 10 employees injured and that it was unclear whether the three assailants who had climbed the stairs had escaped from the scene. He and the militia both described the attackers as dark-skinned, suggesting they could be from ethnic groups native to Libya or from other African countries.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack.
The chairman of the state oil company, Mustafa Sanallah, escaped unharmed and experts said it was unlikely that the attack would directly affect Libya’s oil production. But the events demonstrated that the country’s oil infrastructure remains vulnerable.
“It’s a reminder that the country remains at risk,” said Riccardo Fabiani, a geopolitical analyst at Energy Aspects, a market research firm. “There is still a backdrop of violence and instability that could again cut production at anytime in the future.”
Libya has descended into chaos in the seven years since the NATO-backed overthrow of Moammar Gadhafi. The United Nations and Western powers have tried to set up a government based in Tripoli.
But so far, power in Tripoli and Western Libya remains divided among rival local or Islamic militias.