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Libya’s UN-backed government launched a counterattack on Sunday against a strategic military base used by renegade commander Khalifa Haftar to hit the capital Tripoli with rockets.
The response came after a missile bombardment damaged Tripoli main airport and set fire to fuel tanks and several planes, with at least six civilians killed in surrounding residential areas in Saturday’s attacks.
Meanwhile, Turkey, the main ally of the National Accord Government (GNA) defending Tripoli against the Haftar Libyan National Army (LNA), threatened to intensify its attacks on the eastern-based LNA, which has attempted to seize the capital for over a year. .
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“The forces of the war criminal [Haftar] “They fired more than a hundred rockets and missiles in residential areas in the center of the capital,” the GNA said in a statement on Facebook.
The airport suffered severe damage and was the target of further rocket attacks on Sunday morning, he said.
Mahmoud Abdelwahed of Al Jazeera, reporting from Tripoli, said the GNA launched the counter-offensive in an effort to take a key LNA base using advanced weapons to attack the city center.
“Government military commanders say they are trying to recapture a military camp in southern Tripoli, which has been under the control of Haftar’s forces for the past few months. Haftar’s troops have been using that camp to fire rockets at residential areas and the airport, “said Abdelwahed.
“Military sources say it is also important because it is led and protected by Russian military experts from the Wagner Group, who have been fighting with Haftar’s forces.”
More than a dozen people have been killed in the past two days in missile attacks, the Tripoli-based government said.
‘Responsible for suffering’
Turkey said on Sunday it would consider Haftar’s forces “legitimate targets” if their attacks against its interests and diplomatic missions in Libya persisted.
On Thursday, Turkey and Italy said the area around their embassies in Tripoli had been bombed.
Turkey supports Libya’s internationally recognized GNA. He signed a military cooperation agreement with the GNA and deployed trainers and military equipment, including armed drones that helped repel the Haftar offensive.
Ankara regards Haftar’s forces, backed by the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Russia, as “coup plotters”.
“If our missions and our interests in Libya are objective, we will consider legitimate objectives of the Haftar forces,” the Foreign Ministry said in a statement, which also criticized the United Nations for failing to take action on the LNA attacks. .
“It is unacceptable for the United Nations to remain silent against this butcher shop any longer,” he said. “The countries that provide military, financial and political aid to Haftar are responsible for the suffering suffered by the people of Libya and for the chaos and instability in which the country is being dragged.”
He also said that the attacks on Tripoli ‘s Mitiga airport early Saturday, part of an intensive artillery fire bombardment in the capital, were war crimes.
“Attacks on diplomatic missions, including our embassy in Tripoli, Mitiga airport, civil aircraft preparing to take off and other civil infrastructure, and those that kill civilians or injure them, constitute a war crime,” the statement added. .
Haftar’s LNA has been fighting for more than a year to capture Tripoli from the GNA, frequently bombarding the capital. The United Nations said that four-fifths of the 130 civilian casualties recorded in the Libyan conflict in the first quarter of 2020 were caused by LNA ground fighting.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Monday that the LNA was in a “period of regression” after NATO member Turkey supported the GNA.
“Even the efforts of the countries that provide it [Haftar] with unlimited financial support and weapons will not be able to save him, “Erdogan said.
‘Terrifying show’
Pro-GNA forces have recovered part of the LNA territory around Tripoli during an escalation of fighting in recent weeks with the help of drones supplied by Turkey.
The LNA says Turkey has established a military drone base at Mitiga airport, but the GNA denies it.
The United Nations Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL) called the bombing “an all too familiar but terrifying sight”.
“These horrible attacks regularly occur near civilian neighborhoods,” UNSMIL said on Twitter.
He called the bombing “one of a series of indiscriminate attacks, most of which are attributable to pro-LNA forces, killing more than 15 and injuring 50 civilians since May 1.”
Since Wednesday, 17 civilians and two police officers have been killed and more than 66 civilians were wounded in the launch of rockets at various areas of the capital, according to the GNA.
UNSMIL criticized the attacks for hitting civilians and civil infrastructure, and called for “those responsible for crimes under international law to be brought to justice.”
But the GNA said that international condemnation was not enough.
“We no longer pay attention to the timid condemnations of the international community … The senseless acts are proof of their weakness and despair after the successive defeats of their militias and mercenaries,” he added.
Haftar’s forces have suffered several setbacks in recent weeks, and GNA fighters pushed them from two key coastal cities west of Tripoli in April.
GNA troops now surround the LNA’s main rear base in Tarhouna, 80 km (50 miles) southeast of the capital.
