Libya: Eastern government says it has entered Tripoli, clashes between armed groups

Clashes erupted on Tuesday May 17 in Tripoli after the Libyan government appointed by parliament and supported by Marshal Khalifa Haftar announced its entry into the capital, seat of the rival executive power.

The press service of this government announced in a press release "the arrival of the Prime Minister of the Libyan government, Fathi Bachagha, accompanied by several ministers, in the capital Tripoli, to begin his work there".

The government sitting in Tripoli did not react immediately to this announcement.

Arm wrestling with the executive in place

Clashes between armed groups broke out in Tripoli shortly after the entry of the government of Fathi Bachagha, noted an AFP journalist.

Heavy gunfire continued in the city around 7 a.m. local time.

In February, the parliament sitting in the east appointed Fathi Bachagha, a former interior minister, as the new prime minister.

This body is supported by the powerful Marshal Khalifa Haftar, whose forces had tried to conquer the capital in 2019.

But Fathi Bachagha had so far failed to oust the executive in place in Tripoli, led by businessman Abdelhamid Dbeibah, who has repeatedly affirmed that he would only hand over power to a government elected.

The government of Abdelhamid Dbeibah was born in early 2020 from a political process sponsored by the UN, with the main mission of organizing legislative and presidential elections, initially scheduled for last December, but postponed indefinitely.

His political rivals believe that his term ended with this postponement.

Undermined by divisions between competing institutions in East and West, Libya is struggling to extricate itself from more than a decade of political chaos and conflict following the fall of Muammar Gaddafi's regime in 2011, in the wake of of the Arab Spring.

Oil production, the country's main source of income, is again hostage to political divisions, with a wave of forced closures of oil sites.

At the end of April, the divided UN Security Council adopted a resolution by the United Kingdom extending its political mission in Libya by only three months, with Russia refusing any longer duration until a new UN envoy is in place. appointed.

With AFP

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