Clashes between two prominent armed groups, the 444 Brigade and the Al-Radaacapital, in the Libyan Tripoli resulted in the deaths of 55 individuals and injuries to 146 people.
Tripoli’s worst armed clashes in a year have killed 55 people and wounded 146, Libyan media reported Wednesday, after a truce took hold in the capital and air traffic was restored.
Fighting erupted on Monday night and raged through Tuesday between the influential 444 Brigade and the Al-Radaa, or Special Deterrence Force, two of the myriad of militias that have vied for power since the 2011 overthrow of longtime dictator Moamer Kadhafi.
Libya has seen over a decade of stop-start conflict since the NATO-backed revolt that toppled Kadhafi.
A period of relative stability had led the United Nations to express hope for delayed elections this year, and the latest fighting triggered international calls for calm.
An interior ministry official said that the clashes with rocket launchers and machine guns followed the detention of the 444 Brigade head, Colonel Mahmud Hamza, by the rival Al-Radaa Force on Monday.
Late Tuesday, the social council in the southeastern suburb of Soug el-Joumaa, a stronghold of Al-Radaa, announced that an agreement had been reached with Prime Minister Abdelhamid Dbeibah, head of the UN-recognised government in Tripoli, for Hamza to be handed over to a “neutral party.”
In a televised announcement, the council said a ceasefire would follow the transfer of the force’s commander, and late on Tuesday, the fighting abated.
Both armed groups are aligned with Dbeibah’s government.
A total of 234 families were evacuated from frontline areas in the capital’s southern suburbs, along with dozens of doctors and paramedics trapped by the fighting while caring for the wounded, the Emergency Medical Centre said.
The Libyan capital’s only civilian airport, Mitiga, in an area under Al-Radaa’s control, reopened to commercial flights on Wednesday, officials said. Flights had been diverted to Misrata about 180 kilometres (110 miles) to the east.
The interior ministry put in place a security plan to deploy officers to battleground districts to oversee the truce announced between the two sides.
The 444 Brigade is affiliated with Libya’s defense ministry and is reputed to be the North African country’s most disciplined armed group. It controls the southern suburbs of Tripoli and other areas.
The Al-Radaa force is a powerful ultra-conservative militia that acts as the capital’s police force and controls central and eastern Tripoli, Mitiga air base, the civilian airport, and a prison.
Katrine Houmøller, with AFP
