Fighters overrun Libyan special forces base
“Benghazi base taken by coalition of armed groups, officials say, as infringement in shaky ceasefire reported in Tripoli.”
Armed groups and militias have overrun a major Libyan army base in the eastern city of Benghazi after a fierce battle involving rockets and jets in which at least 30 people were killed, officials have said.
Special forces troops had to abandon their base in southeast Benghazi after coming under sustained attack from a
coalition of groups, military officials and residents said.
“We have withdrawn from the army base after heavy shelling,” Saiqa special forces official Fadel al-Hassi told Reuters.
Benghazi has suffered months-long battles between militias and forces allied with renegade general, Khalifa Haftar, who launched a campaign aimed at crushing what he calls “terrorists” and “extremists”.
On Tuesday, a fighter jet crashed after Haftar’s forces launched attacks on groups including Ansar al-Sharia – an al-Qaeda-inspired group the US blames for the September 11, 2012, attack on its embassy.
Mohammed Hegazi, a spokesman for Haftar’s so-called National Army, claimed that the jet crashed due to a “technical failure” and that the pilot safely escaped.
However, the official Facebook page of the Shura Council of Benghazi Revolutionaries, an umbrella of armed groups there, claimed responsibility for “downing” the jet.
The base’s fall came as a ceasefire brokered late on Monday between Libyan militias in Tripoli was reportedly broken.
A shell has struck an oil depot tank in Tripoli’s Sedi Bu-Salem district, an official with Libya’s state-run oil corporation told the AP news agency. The tank did not catch fire.
The ceasefire agreement was made on Monday to allow firefighters to battle an out-of-control fire near the capital’s airport, which was devastated by shelling between the militias that have controlled it since the fall of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.
The confrontations have prompted many diplomats and foreigners, including the US ambassador in Libya, and staff from the UN and Canadian embassy, to flee the country.