Marsad Libya Libyan Security Sector Observatory

Libyan special forces said on Monday they had retaken the main military base in Benghazi from Islamist fighters that they have been battling since October, part of a wider struggle four years after the ousting of autocrat Moammer Qaddafi.

The General Command of the Libyan army announces that its only mission is to fight terrorists and defeat their allies of extremist militias and gangsters and not to intervene in politics.

The uprisings in Benghazi that sparked the fall of the Qadhafi regime began on 15 February 2011. Four years on from that euphoric time, few could have predicted just how bad things in Libya would become. While the challenges facing the country as it embarked upon the transition from authoritarianism …

The first artillery rounds landed just as the setting sun threw shadows on this barren stretch of coast. Atop an earthen observation berm, a young fighter in an oversize flak vest peered through a makeshift periscope. Six miles away was the prize: white storage tanks filled with oil.

The first artillery rounds landed just as the setting sun threw shadows on this barren stretch of coast. Atop an earthen observation berm, a young fighter in an oversize flak vest peered through a makeshift periscope. Six miles away was the prize: white storage tanks filled with oil.

A leading Libyan military commander has denied he ordered the prime minister’s convoy to be blocked late last week. General Khalifa Haftar, commander of the Libyan National Army and operating with the authority of the internationally recognised parliament in Tobruk, tweeted his denial after Prime Minister Abdullah al-Thani’s visit to Benghazi.