The only functioning airport in Libya’s capital reopened on Wednesday after coming under attack, despite a tenuous truce that world powers have pushed warring parties to respect.
Authorities at Tripoli’s Mitiga airport said six Grad missiles crashed into the tarmac, prompting the airport to briefly suspend and divert flights to a northwestern city. But there were no reports of damage or casualties from the shells. Just over an hour later, flights resumed.
The sudden shelling in Mitiga put a cease-fire brokered earlier this month by Russia and Turkey on shaky ground, as diplomatic efforts to halt the long-running civil war intensify. Although both sides announced they would halt operations, intermittent clashes continue to rattle residents on the outskirts of Tripoli.
FILE - In this Aug. 20, 2011, file, photo taken on a government-organized tour, airplanes are parked in the tarmac of the international airport in Tripoli, Libya. The only functioning airport in Libya's capital suspended its operations after coming under attack Wednesday, Jan. 22, 2020, airport authorities said, despite a tenuous truce that world powers have pushed warring parties to respect. Authorities at Mitiga airport said six Grad missiles crashed into the tarmac. (AP PhotoDario Lopez-Mills, File)
It was not immediately clear who launched the attack, but suspicion fell on Gen. Khalifa Hifter’s eastern-based forces, which have been laying siege to the capital for months in a bid to wrest authority from the U.N.-backed government.
Mitiga airport, the sole landing strip for the Tripoli-based administration as well as its major military base, is a strategic target for Libya’s eastern forces.
But the airport also gets caught in the cross-hairs as feuding western militias skirmish and try to carve out domains of control.
On Sunday, world powers with interests in the oil-rich country convened at a peace summit in Berlin, where they pledged to halt foreign interference and honor a widely violated arms embargo.
The peace push followed a surge in Hifter’s offensive on Tripoli, which has threatened to plunge Libya into chaos rivaling the 2011 conflict that ousted and killed longtime dictator Moammar Gadhafi.
Still, basic questions about a concrete political process remain unresolved.
The foreign ministers of Libya’s neighboring countries are set to meet in Algeria on Thursday for discussions on “rapidly-changing developments” following the Berlin conference, according to Egypt’s foreign ministry.
Hifter’s forces, which control the east and much of the south, receive support from the United Arab Emirates and Egypt, as well as France and Russia.
The Tripoli-based government is backed by Turkey, and to a lesser degree Qatar and Italy, in its struggle to repel Hifter’s self-styled army.
BEIRUT (AP) — Leaked photographs of the son of Libya’s late dictator Moammar Gadhafi and the tiny underground cell where he has been held for years in Lebanon have raised concerns in the north African nation as Libyan authorities demand improvements.
The photos showed a room without natural light packed with Hannibal Gadhafi’s belongings, a bed and a tiny toilet. “I live in misery,” local Al-Jadeed TV quoted the detainee as saying in a Saturday evening broadcast, adding that he is a political prisoner in a case he has no information about.
Two Lebanese judicial officials confirmed to The Associated Press on Monday that the photographs aired by Al-Jadeed are of Gadhafi and the cell where he has been held for years at police headquarters in Beirut. Gadhafi appeared healthy, with a light beard and glasses.
A person who is usually in contact with Gadhafi, a Libyan citizen, said the photos were taken in recent days. All spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to media outlets.
Gadhafi has been held in Lebanon since 2015 after he was kidnapped from neighboring Syria, where he had been living as a political refugee. He was abducted by Lebanese militants demanding information about the fate of prominent Lebanese Shiite cleric Moussa al-Sadr, who went missing during a trip to Libya in 1978.
The fate of al-Sadr has been a sore point in Lebanon. His family believes he may still be alive in a Libyan prison, though most Lebanese presume al-Sadr, who would be 95 now, is dead.
A Libyan delegation visited Beirut in January to reopen talks with Lebanese officials on the fate of al-Sadr and the release of Gadhafi. The talks were aimed at reactivating a dormant agreement between Lebanon and Libya, struck in 2014, for cooperation in the probe of al-Sadr. The delegation did not return to Beirut as planned.
The leaks by Al-Jadeed came after reports that Gadhafi was receiving special treatment at police headquarters and that he had cosmetic surgeries including hair transplants and teeth improvements. Al-Jadeed quoted him as saying: “Let them take my hair and teeth and give me my freedom.”
Gadhafi went on a hunger strike in June last year and was taken to a hospital after his health deteriorated.
Libya’s Justice Ministry in a statement Sunday said Gadhafi is being deprived of his rights guaranteed by law. It called on Lebanese authorities to improve his living conditions to one that “preserves his dignity," adding that Lebanese authorities should formally inform the ministry of the improvements. It also said Gadhafi deserves to be released.
After he was kidnapped in 2015, Lebanese authorities freed him but then detained him, accusing him of concealing information about al-Sadr’s disappearance.
Al-Sadr was the founder of the Amal group, a Shiite militia that fought in Lebanon’s 1975-90 civil war and later became a political party that is currently led by the country’s Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri.
Many of al-Sadr’s followers are convinced that Moammar Gadhafi ordered al-Sadr killed in a dispute over Libyan payments to Lebanese militias. Libya has maintained that the cleric, along with two traveling companions, left Tripoli in 1978 on a flight to Rome.
Human Rights Watch issued a statement in January calling for Gadhafi’s release. The rights group noted that Gadhafi was only 2 years old at the time of al-Sadr’s disappearance and held no senior position in Libya as an adult.
FILE - In this undated file photo made available Sept. 25, 2011, Hannibal Gadhafi, son of ousted Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, watches an elite military unit exercise in Zlitan, Libya. Leaked photographs of Hannibal Gadhafi and the tiny underground cell where he has been held for years in Lebanon have raised concerns. Libyan authorities are demanding that Lebanon improves living conditions for Gadhafi. (AP Photo/Abdel Magid al-Fergany, File)
