Libyan Civil War

A tablet provided by a mercenary for the Russian Wagner group in Libya provides evidence of the mercenaries' involvement in mining and booby trapping of civilian areas and other possible war crimes, BBC News reported on Wednesday. The investigation, mostly conducted through evidence from the tablet's contents, has revealed the extent of operations by the shadowy Russian mercenary group in Libya's civil war, which include links to war crimes and the Russian military. As the BBC reported, they also managed to gain rare…

In a celebration marking the 81st anniversary of the establishment of the Libyan army, with an unmistakable reference to an unsuccessful attack from April 2019 on the capital Tripoli by the Putis general Khalifa Haftar's militia, Libyan Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Mohammed Dbeibah said on Tuesday that national armies are to protect their capitals, not storm them. "Capitals are precious pearls, and armies were founded to protect them, not to storm them, terrorize their people and destroy their property,…

The UN Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL) said on Tuesday night that it "condemned" what it describes as the "abduction" of the chief of staff to a senior politician in the capital Tripoli. The kidnapping is the latest in a series of incidents that have called into question the war - torn country's progress towards planned free and fair national polls in December, including a new collapse of talks on an election format. UNSMIL said in a statement on Twitter that it was "deeply concerned about the…

Putschist General Khalifa Haftar's so-called Libyan National Army (LNA) will not be subordinate to the current Libyan government, the warlord said on Monday. In a speech marking the 81st anniversary of the founding of the Libyan army, Haftar emphasized that his militia "will not be subject to any authority other than an authority that will be directly elected by the people." Haftar, who is based in the eastern city of Benghazi, added that his militia would resist any pressure sent in its direction and…

Turkey welcomes the resumption of the strategic road Misrata-Sirte, which connects eastern and western Libya, the Foreign Ministry said late on Saturday. "We welcome the official opening of the Misrata-Sirte coastal road on July 30, 2021, which has been closed for a long time," it said in a statement. Turkey also praised the efforts of the Presidential Council, National Unity Government (GNU), led by Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Mohammed Dbeibah, the UN Support Mission in Libya and the 5 + 5 Joint…

The Libyan army said the militia loyal to Putist General Khalifa Haftar has a deadline of Saturday to resume the strategic coastal road that connects the country to the east and west. "We sent a letter to 5 + 5 Libya's Joint Military Commission giving them until Saturday (to inform Haftar's militia) to open the coastal road," Abdel-Hadi Darah, a spokesman for the Sirte-Jufra Operations Room, told Anadolu Agency (AA). The Joint Military Committee comprises five members from the internationally…

A Libyan militia leader accused of major human rights abuses and sanctioned by the United States was shot dead on Tuesday in eastern Benghazi province, officials said. Libyan officials said security forces looted Mohamed al-Kani's house in Benghazi to carry out an arrest warrant on charges of killing civilians. Libyan officials and the United States claim that al-Kani was responsible for the deaths of people found in mass graves last year in the western city of Tarhuna. Tarhuna, a strategic city about…

If Libya's national elections scheduled for December are delayed, the war-torn country will return to "square one" and unrest in 2011, the speaker said, with a new rival government likely to set up in the east. The election is seen in the West as a critical step in efforts to create stability in Libya, which has been in chaos since the NATO-backed uprising in 2011 against Muammar Gaddafi. Libya, a major oil and gas producer, was divided in 2014 between an internationally recognized government in the…

Regular Russian troops are now stationed in Libya, the head of the Democracy and Human Rights Foundation (DHRF), Emadeddin Muntasser, said on Friday as the UN and the international community called on mercenaries and foreign forces to withdraw from the war-torn country. . DHRF was told by sources from the Libyan Ministry of Defense who spoke on an anonymous level that ordinary Russian troops had been discovered near Jufra Airbase and provided evidence with confidential aerial photos and coordinates of…

The UN Special Envoy for Libya, Jan Kubis, on Thursday rejected the lack of progress towards elections in the war-torn country in December later this year. Kubis accused "destroyers" of trying to prevent the holding of crucial elections to unite the divided North African nation, and the Security Council warned that any individual or group undermining the electoral process could be subject to UN sanctions. Kubis said at a ministerial meeting in the Council that he spoke to many key players during his…