The explosives provided by forces loyal to Putist general Khalifa Haftar and foreign fighters following the attack on Tripoli continue to pose a deadly threat to civilians living in the region.
Sadeeq Ferjani’s death from a captive trap left by warriors at his home in southern Tripoli is a reminder of the deadly efforts in Libya when international powers meet in Berlin to discuss the crisis.
Sadeeq, 39 years old and planning to get married, went with three neighbors to check the damage after a fight last summer. He was photographing with his phone when he stumbled across a wire.
“Suddenly a huge explosion was heard,” said his brother, Ismail, 37. “I learn that Sadeeq was killed directly from his serious injuries.”
A 14-month attack by Haftar’s eastern Libyan National Army (LNA) on Tripoli has limited a decade of chaos and violence since the overthrow of Moammar Gadhafi.
Although the main factions stopped fighting soon after the LNA withdrew in June and a new unity government was installed that represents the best hope for peace for several years, the risk of renewed conflict remains.
Nowhere is that danger more obvious than in southern Tripoli, where Haftar’s forces, including many foreign mercenaries, left a deadly legacy of hidden explosives that have killed many people trying to return home.
Landmines have been hidden in homes and streets, hidden in seemingly innocent objects such as toys and household appliances designed to lure in the careless. Haftar representatives could not be reached for comment, but they have previously denied having placed explosives in civilian areas. Ferjanis lives in Wadi al-Rebea, the site of collisions that have left a landscape of flared cars, scaled-down houses and ruined shops. Along their street is “Beware of mines” on walls and fences in red.
But after living as displaced people elsewhere in the capital, Ferjanis needed to move home.
Since Ismail and his family could not afford the rent in Tripoli, they still had no choice but to move back to an annex they built in their own house next to Sadeeq – surrounded by courtyards and houses where every step could trigger an explosion.
Sadeeq unfortunately took the deadly step and added his name to the list of civilian victims.
In the Ain Zara district, Abdul Rahman al-Arifi, 25, drove back to the family home last summer with his mother Fawzia to assess the damage.
Arifi, along with his parents and five siblings, had left Ain Zara and abandoned their belongings when a missile hit the building next to theirs.
Turn a gravel road to buy a bottle of water, drove the car over a mine. Arifi arrived half an hour later, his eyes swollen and his body numb.
He staggered out of the car and found his mother lying on the road, her face crushed, one leg cut off and her stomach torn open. “She cried a little and then walked away,” he said.
A passer-by helped him get to the hospital, where he was admitted to intensive care and treated for several weeks for scratching injuries to the eye, jaw, neck, leg, hands and stomach.
As Arifi sits with her father and siblings, they keep saying over and over, “We lost our mother.”
The Berlin conference will discuss political progress in Libya, national elections scheduled for December and the withdrawal of foreign fighters.
But the peace process faces many challenges that could lead to its dissolution and renewed warfare. Meanwhile, a myriad of armed groups still have power on the ground.
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