TRIPOLI: Gunmen fired grenades at the Tripoli home of Libya’s new Prime Minister, Ahmed Maiteeq, and his guards killed at least one assailant yesterday, just days after parliament approved his appointment in a contested vote.
Full details of the morning attack were not clear, but Maiteeq, who is Libya’s third premier in two months, was unharmed. “There were two cars and they fired RPGs (rocket-propelled grenades) at his home,” a source from the prime minister’s office said.
A week after Maiteeq’s appointment, gunmen loyal to a renegade former general attacked the parliament as part of the general’s self-declared war on Islamist militants.
The former general, Khalifa Haftar, has rejected Maiteeq’s government and demanded parliament hand over power. Early elections have been called for June.
Haftar gained the support of several regular military factions and other militia brigades fiercely opposed to the Muslim Brotherhood and Islamist factions.
Rival powerful brigades more allied with Islamist political parties have already rejected Haftar as a would-be coup-plotter, leaving Libya closer to a violent stand-off among its militia factions.
At stake also are Libya’s large oil resources. They have been battered by months of blockades by an array of former rebel groups and local protesters whose demands range from more autonomy to better payments.
A brigade from Libya’s state-run Petroleum Facilities Guard was disrupting operations at Hariga port as they demanded salary payments, an official from state-run oil company AGOCO said. The protest was interrupting work at the port, where full storage tanks forced a stoppage of production at two oilfields.
The Petroleum Facilities Guards at Hariga have been allied with Ibrahim Jathran, a former rebel commander who defected from the Guards to take over four major oil ports last summer to demand more autonomy for his region.
Jathran had agreed to lift his blockade under a deal with the government. But late on Monday he said he does not recognise Maiteeq’s government, suggesting the oil deal may be in jeopardised.
REUTERS
