TRIPOLI // Islamist fighters claim to have captured Tripoli’s battered international airport after days of clashes with nationalist militiamen.
The claim from Fajr Libya — the Libyan Dawn coalition — followed a setback the previous night when a warplane raided Islamist positions, killing 13 fighters.
The capture of the airport would be a major defeat for the nationalist fighters from Zintan west of Tripoli who have held the airport since the fall of Muammar Qaddafi in 2011.
A statement shown on screen on An-Nabaa television, regarded as close to the Islamists, said: “Fajr Libya announces that it totally controls Tripoli international airport.”
A spokesman for the Islamist coalition, partly comprising men from Misurata, east of Tripoli, said its fighters “have entered the airport and are mopping up pockets of resistance”.
The claim of the airport’s capture comes as Libya’s outgoing provisional General National Congress (GNC), which was dominated by Islamists, will resume operations despite being superseded by an elected national parliament, its spokesman said on Saturday.
The strategic airport 30 kilometres south of the Libyan capital, has been shut since July 13 amid clashes between the Islamists and the Zintan force, allies of rogue general Khalifa Haftar, based at Benghazi in eastern Libya and hostile to the Islamists.
The Islamist coalition, which repeatedly claims successes against the nationalists, on Thursday organised a visit by Libyan journalists to an army base on the way to the airport, to prove they had taken it.
In the wake of the raids, the GNC will convene again despite a national parliament being elected in June, its spokesman said.
Friday night’s air strike killed 13 Islamists and left 20 wounded, said Ahmed Hadia, a Fajr Libya spokesman.
“We reserve the right to respond at the opportune moment,” Mr Hadia said.
The Islamist fighters believe Libya’s provisional government and newly elected parliament “are accomplices to these raids and in doing so have committed an act of treason that removes their legitimacy to govern the people”, he said.
The spokesman called on the GNC, whose mandate expired when the new parliament was sworn in earlier this month, to meet again to “defend the sovereignty of the Libyan state”.
The Islamists were well represented in the GNC but non-Islamist blocs dominate the new parliament, which is holed up along with the provisional government in Tobruk 1,600 kilometres east of Tripoli, to avoid the violence in the capital.
“The General National Congress will hold an emergency meeting in Tripoli to save the country’s sovereignty,” GNC spokesman Omar Ahmidan said.
The drawn-out battle for the airport has sparked the worst violence in the Libyan capital since the 2011 uprising.
* Agence France-Presse
