Libya pro-government forces say seize Sirte from Daesh

Forces allied with the country’s unity government launched an offensive to retake the city on May 12

 

Tripoli: Libyan forces have seized full control of the coastal city of Sirte from Daesh, an official spokesman said Monday.

“Our forces have total control of Sirte,” after more than six months of fighting, Reda Issa, a spokesman for pro-government forces, told AFP.

“Our forces saw Daesh totally collapsing,” he said.

Sirte, on Libya’s Mediterranean coast, was the last significant Daesh-held territory in the north African country.

Forces allied with the country’s unity government launched an offensive to retake the city on May 12, quickly seizing large areas of the city and cornering the militants.

But Daesh put up fierce resistance with suicide car bombings, snipers and improvised explosive devices.

The United States started a bombing campaign in August at the request of the UN-backed Government of National Accord (GNA) to help local forces recapture the city, seized by militants in June 2015.

“Daesh has totally collapsed and dozens of them have given themselves up to our forces,” said a statement on the government forces’ official Facebook page on Monday.

The fall of Sirte - the hometown of the slain dictator Muammar Gaddafi - represents a significant blow to the militants, who have also faced major setbacks in Syria and Iraq.

The victory comes amid heavy tension in the capital city of Tripoli.

Over the weekend, rival armed factions battled overnight and into Friday in the worst outbreak of fighting in the Libyan capital Tripoli for more than a year.

Black smoke rose into the sky and explosions reverberated around the Abu Salim and Hadba districts, and an eyewitness said a major road nearby had been blocked off with shipping containers.

Gunfire echoed across several other neighbourhoods.

Tripoli is controlled by an array of armed groups which sporadically clash over territorial control or economic interests. Some groups have quasi-official status, but no government has succeeded in taming their power since the uprising that toppled Gaddafi five years ago.

The violence is the latest setback for the UN-backed Government of National Accord (GNA), which arrived in the capital in March with the acquiescence of some powerful armed factions but has struggled to assert its authority.

The GNA is part of Western efforts to end Libya’s chaos and unite factions aligned with two rival governments that were set up in Tripoli and eastern Libya in 2014. But the GNA has faced resistance from power brokers in eastern Libya and more recently from figures associated with a previous government in Tripoli that it had tried to displace.

UN Libya envoy Martin Kobler said he was “extremely alarmed” by the clashes. “We are in contact with the parties on the ground to urge an immediate end to this fighting.”

Sustained gunfire started on Thursday as armed groups mobilised military vehicles including tanks and pick-up trucks mounted with heavy weapons.

Factional fighting in 2014 destroyed Tripoli’s international airport.