Turkey on Friday criticised the EU’s Operation Irini aimed at halting arms shipments to Libya as “not objective”, a day after NATO said it would probe a naval incident with a French ship.

Earlier, France condemned the interference of Turkish naval forces with the actions of the French Navy, which was trying to check the cargo of a ship sailing towards Libya, suspecting it of arms smuggling.

Bloomberg reported Thursday that a senior United Arab Emirates (UAE) official had delivered rare criticism of the Gulf nation’s Libyan ally Khalifa Haftar after he suffered major battlefield defeats at the hands of the internationally recognized government.

US military transport planes regularly conduct flights from the Ramstein Air Base in Germany to two Libyan cities, Tripoli and Misrata, an anonymous diplomatic source told Sputnik. Both cities are currently under the control of the Government of National Accord (GNA), a Libyan government approved by the UN and in …

The Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said Thursday the United States started to have a more viable role in Libya, saying Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Donald Trump had reached a common ground regarding the Libyan crisis.

Russia’s introduction of new aircraft to Libya “changes the nature of the current conflict”, the US military said, adding that Moscow’s support of militia leader Khalifa Haftar endangers Libyan civilians.

Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said that Russia would welcome any US support for efforts to convince the warring parties in Libya to stop the fighting and launch a political process for peace.

France accused Turkey’s Navy Force on Wednesday of acting in a “hostile and aggressive” manner towards its NATO allies to prevent them from enforcing a United Nations arms embargo on Libya.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mavlut Cavusoglu, Treasury and Finance Minister Berat Albayrak, Presidential Spokesperson İbrahim Kalın and National Intelligence Organization (MİT) chair Hakan Fidan visited Libya on June 17 for official meetings.

Libya’s UN-recognised government announced on Wednesday the arrest of suspects in the alleged abuse of a group of Egyptian labourers that sparked outcry and a UN call for an investigation.