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Shells kill 7 in Tripoli neighborhood as Haftar's 2-week siege rages

Shells kill  in Tripoli neighborhood as Haftars week siege rages
Shells kill 7 in Tripoli neighborhood as Haftar's 2-week siege rages

2019-04-17 00:00:00 - Source: Baghdad Post

Shells slammed into a densely-populated district of Tripoli

overnight, piling misery on civilians from a two-week assault by commander

Khalifa Haftar’s forces to take Libya’s capital from an internationally-backed

government, Reuters reported.

About 10 GRAD rockets hit the southern residential area of

Abu Salim just before midnight on Tuesday, witnesses and authorities said,

killing at least seven people, mainly women, and wounding 17. Some of them lost

limbs.

Both sides blamed each other for the attack, the most

intense yet on a residential area. Abu Salim is near a main point of entry into

the city of about 2.5 million people.

Retired public servant Hadia al-Hariri was sleeping next to

his wife when a shell hit the dining room of their two-storey house in Abu

Salim, wounding her and their three-year-old son in the head. He rushed his

other five children to a relative.

“We’ve heard gunfire every night, but now I’m really

afraid,” Hariri said as neighbors consoled him in a narrow street where remains

of a GRAD could be seen by his front door.

“This war can go on for months...I don’t know what to do

next,” he said, clearing debris from burned shelves and shattered window

glasses in the dining room with a gaping hole in the front wall.

Haftar and his eastern Libyan forces have cast their advance

as part of a campaign to restore order and defeat jihadists in nation gripped

by anarchy since the 2011 overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi.

But the internationally-recognized Tripoli government of

Prime Minister Fayez al-Sarraj - which has kept him at bay in the southern

suburbs - views the 75-year-old general as a dangerous would-be dictator in the

Gaffafi mould.

The United Nations says thousands of civilians are trapped

in southern districts of Tripoli due to the fighting. Rescuers and aid workers

are struggling to reach them and electricity, water supplies and

telecommunications have been badly disrupted.

“LOST TRACK OF WHY WE FIGHT”

Nearly 20,000 people have fled homes, some seeking shelter

elsewhere in Tripoli but most heading out. At least 14 civilians have been

killed - along with scores of fighters - and about 36 wounded during the

offensive, according to UN tallies issued prior to Tuesday night’s barrages.

UN Libya envoy Ghassan Salame, who lives in Tripoli and has

been pushing a peace plan, condemned the shelling.

“Killing innocent people is a blatant violation of

international laws,” Salame said in a tweet.

Abu Salim lies about 8 km (5 miles) from the city center,

behind the front line of pro-Sarraj forces blocking Haftar’s Libyan National

Army (LNA) fighters to their south.

It is home to more than 100,000 people and was once famous

for hosting a notorious prison under Gaddafi.

The area was a battleground during the rebellion against

Gaddafi in 2011 and again during battles for Tripoli in 2014 and 2017, given

its strategic location next to a highway leading to an old airport that is the

gateway to Tripoli from the south.

Younes Blis lives in an apartment building on the airport

road, where a Grad landed nearby destroying several cars. He fears further

destruction given Haftar has amassed thousands of troops in the biggest mobilization

since 2011.

“I lost track of why we are fighting,” Blis said, shrugging.

On the other side of the road, four women died when three

rockets hit buildings sandwiched between narrow streets.

“They didn’t stand a chance,” said Essam Taha, a neighbor.

“We are not safe here but we can’t leave. We have 150 families in the area but

who has space for so many?”

International powers are aghast at the flare-up in Libya,

which has scuppered a United Nations’ peace plan, threatens to disrupt oil

supplies from the OPEC nation, and may unleash a new wave of illegal migration

across the Mediterranean to Europe.

But no common position has emerged given different

sympathies toward the factions round the Gulf and Europe.





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