Libyan army cadets despatched this summer for six-months’ basic training in the UK are being sent home early, after three of their number were charged sex attacks in a nearby town and following a minor mutiny last September which saw a British soldier roughed up.

A Libyan navy ship was hit during heavy fighting with aircraft and tanks on Monday between the army and Islamist militants near the port of Benghazi, residents of the major city on Libya’s eastern Mediterranean coast said.

Hundreds of families have fled their homes in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi as street fighting raged between rival armed groups in the city.

Libya’s army special forces have seized back four barracks from armed Islamist groups in the eastern city of Benghazi, a commander said on Friday, after two weeks of heavy fighting which has killed at least 210 people.

Three years after the toppling of Muammar Gaddafi’s regime, Libya is far from the democratic state many had envisioned and hoped for. Instead the country finds itself fragmented into an alarming number of armed groups, raising fears of a full-scale civil war.

As many as 200 military officers from several of Libya’s western regions took part in a conference in Sorman, 20 kilometres west of Zawiya, today, declaring themselves to be the “Libyan Army” and to support Libya Dawn

Shortly after the announcement of his planned trip, the prime minister told the Russian news agency RIA Novosti that “Russia is Libya’s main partner in reforming the country’s armed forces,” adding that approximately 80% of all arms used by the Libyan Army come from Russia.

Libya and Sudan have agreed to strengthen military collaboration, according to the Sudanese news agency SUNA. They have also agreed, it says, that Sudan mediate between the country’s factions.

The Geneva-based Libyan Human Rights Solidarity (LHRS) has warned that the targeting of families related to members of the different battalions that form the Benghazi Revolutionaries Shoura Council (BRSC) by forces loyal to Khalifa Hafter is a war crime and must be stopped by the United Nations before it grows …

The only international military help that Operation Dignity has been receiving is ammunition from Egypt, a fighter from Khalifa Hafter’s forces has claimed.