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