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CAIRO (AP) - Clashes between rival Libyan militias fighting for
control of the international airport in the capital, Tripoli, have
killed 47 people over the past 24 hours, Libya's Health Ministry said.
The ministry said on its website late Sunday that
the fighting also left 120 people wounded. It also said it had not yet
received the full casualty report.
The weeklong battle over the airport is being waged
by a powerful militia from the western city of Zintan, which controls
the facility, and Islamist-led militias, including fighters from
Misrata, east of Tripoli. The clashes resumed Sunday after cease-fire
efforts failed.
Television footage broadcast Sunday showed a mortar
shell striking a Libyan Arab Airlines plane and a column of black smoke
billowing from inside the airport, which has been closed since last
Monday.
Libya is witnessing one of its worst spasms of
violence since the ouster of longtime dictator Moammar Gadhafi in 2011.
The rival militias, made up largely of former rebels, have forced a
weeklong closure of gas stations and government offices.
In recent days, armed men have attacked vehicles
carrying money from the Central Bank to local banks, forcing their
closure. The Central Bank had said banks would reopen Sunday, but then
remained closed as the fighting resumed.
Libyan government officials and activists have
increasingly been targeted in the violence. Unknown gunmen kidnapped two
lawmakers in the western suburbs of Tripoli on Sunday, a parliament
statement said, and urged the government to intervene to free them.
Last Thursday, a female lawmaker in a
liberal-leaning political bloc in the outgoing parliament, Fareha
al-Barqawi, was killed in the eastern city of Darna. The motives behind
the killing were not known, but such targeted killings rampant in Libya
over the past two years have been blamed on the militias, which
successive governments have struggled to control.
In the past two days in Benghazi, Libya's
second-largest city, gunmen killed an army officer while he was driving
home in his car, and a former special forces officer was shot dead in
the downtown Salmani district.
The U.N. Support Mission in Libya said last week it
was temporarily withdrawing its staff because of the deteriorating
security situation.
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