tripoli. Two powerful Libyan armed groups clashed from Monday to Tuesday night, causing at least 55 deaths and 146 injuries, in the suburbs of Tripoli, according to the latest official balance on Wednesday.
Fighting between the 444 Brigade and the Rada Force, or Special Deterrence Force, two of the many formations that have sprung up since the fall of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, broke out on Monday night southeast of the capital.
At least 55 people were killed and 146 wounded in those clashes, Malek Mersit, a spokesman for the Emergency Medical Center (CMU), told al-Ahrar television.
Previously, the CMU had reported that 234 families and dozens of foreign doctors and nurses were evacuated from the southern areas of the city and that three field hospitals were set up and some sixty ambulances were mobilized to come to the aid of the wounded and the injured. civilians trapped by the fighting.
The clashes began on Monday when members of the Rada Force detained Colonel Mahmud Hamza, commander of the 444 Brigade.
On Tuesday night, the “social council”, made up of notables from Soug al Joumaa, a sector southeast of Tripoli and a stronghold of the Rada Force, announced that Hamza would be transferred to a neutral zone and that when this occurred a halt would be established. the fire.
Late on Tuesday, the fighting subsided and on Wednesday Tripoli had resumed its daily rhythm, in an atmosphere of tension.
Libya has been in chaos since the fall of the Gaddafi regime in 2011.
Currently, there are two rival governments in the country: that of Prime Minister Abdel Hamid Dbeibah, installed in Tripoli (west) and recognized by the UN; and the one supported by the powerful marshal Khalifa Haftar, in the east.
Both the Rada Force and the 444 Brigade are aligned with the Dbeibah government and are among the most powerful armed groups in Tripoli.
Brigade 444 reports to the Ministry of Defense and is considered the most disciplined of the armed groups in the west.
The Rada Force acts as police in Tripoli. It declares itself independent from the government and controls the center and east of the city, as well as the Mitiga airport and a prison.
airport reopens
Abdel Hamid Dbeibah visited the area devastated by the fighting on Tuesday night, together with the Minister of the Interior, and asked that “material damage be assessed in order to compensate the citizens,” according to the government.
The Ministry of the Interior set up a security device to supervise the ceasefire and deployed forces in the sectors with the highest tensions.
Commercial flights, provisionally diverted to Misrata (200 km to the east), resumed on Wednesday morning, according to the press service at Mitiga airport, Tripoli’s only civil airport.
On Tuesday, the UN mission in Libya and the embassies of the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Italy and the European Union demanded an “immediate de-escalation” and that “the advances made in recent years in the field of safety”.
A researcher from the NGO Human Rights Watch, Hanan Saleh, deplored the fact that civilian areas are again the theater of combat and stated that nothing will change as long as there are “no consequences” for those responsible for the militias.
At the end of May, both groups clashed in the center of the city, causing minor injuries.
In July and August 2022, clashes between the Rada Force and other groups caused around fifty deaths in Tripoli.
