Khalifa Hifter last spring unilaterally led an offensive against fighters in the eastern city of Benghazi [File: AP]
Army airstrikes hit a warehouse and a factory in a western Libyan city, killing eight people and wounding 24 as the
country's warring sides gave different accounts of the attack.
The strikes took place on Tuesday in Zwara, 110km west of the capital, Tripoli.
Hafez Moammar, a security spokesman in the city, which is allied with Tripoli's authorities, said one strike hit a
warehouse used to store food and the other a chemical factory.
But an army spokesman said the buildings were arms depots used by "terrorists," a term Libya's military and the
elected government, based in the country's east, use for armed groups.
The town's Media Centre said on its Facebook page that eight people were killed, two Libyans and six African
workers. Those wounded include 14 Libyans and 10 foreign workers. It was unclear if anyone was killed in the
factory.
Rival accounts
Moammar said the warplanes were operating under the command of Khalifa Hifter, a former army general who last
spring launched an offensive against armed groups in the eastern city of Benghazi. In August, the fighters took
Tripoli while in October, Hifter and Libya's elected government joined ranks against the armed groups.
A spokesman for Hifter's forces, Mohammed Hegazi, said they had warned their rivals against using "ports and
airports" to transport weapons, ammunition and fighters.
Zwara's Media Centre posted footage of the strikes, showing black smoke rising into the sky. A video purportedly
from inside the warehouse shows partially destroyed walls and ceiling, scattered bags of flour on the floor and a
bombedout truck as a voiceover sarcastically says, "Look, here is the ammunition."
The fighting, Libya's worst crisis the 2011 overthrow and killing of longtime dictator Muammar Gaddafi, has left the
country with two rival governments and parliaments, displaced hundreds of thousands of people and driven out
No comments:
Post a Comment