British Citizens Flee Tripoli on Ship as 25 Libyans Are Reportedly Killed in Fighting
|
Version 0 of 1. CAIRO — A British Navy ship on Sunday evacuated about 100 British citizens from the Libyan capital, Tripoli, as 25 Libyans were reported killed in the fighting between rival militias that has torn apart the city and destroyed its airport. The scenes of anxious foreigners fleeing by boat recalled the mayhem at the start of the Libyan uprising under Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi in 2011, though Tripoli residents say the violence has now become more severe than at any time during the revolt or since. What began three weeks ago as a relatively isolated battle for the airport has spread to round-the-clock skirmishes in pockets throughout the city. More than 200 are believed to have died in the fighting. The battle in the capital is part of a sharp escalation in a national struggle between the allies and opponents of the political Islamist movement. The contest is already dividing the newly elected legislature, set to convene Monday for its first formal session. But the tensions between the two sides had been building for more than a year as the Islamists and their militia allies flexed their muscles, both in Parliament and in the streets. Then, a few months ago, a renegade former general, Khalifa Hifter, began an attempted military takeover, modeled on Egypt’s, to purge all the Islamists. He vowed to defeat and arrest relatively moderate Islamist politicians and hard-line Islamist militants alike, and his takeover attempt polarized what had been a disparate array of armed groups and political factions around the country into two main camps: for and against political Islam. The powerful militias from the city of Misurata, just east of the capital, lined up with the Islamists against what they called a return to authoritarianism. The militias from Zintan, just to the west, sided against what they called Islamist domination. General Hifter’s original takeover attempt has bogged down where it started, in the east, because he has been unable to defeat the local Islamist militias. But, about three weeks ago, Islamist-allied Misuratan fighters tried to seize control of the Tripoli airport from the rival Zintani militia, and the capital erupted. The relative strength of those ideological or factional camps in the newly elected legislature is not yet clear. Many lawmakers were elected as independents, but on Monday they will begin to choose leaders and form coalitions. The first test of strength within the body, however, was already set off after the role of convening the body fell, by virtue of age, to an eastern regionalist who is opposed to the Islamists. He called for the legislature to meet in the eastern city of Tobruk to avoid Tripoli’s violence. Before a preliminary gathering on Saturday, a group of representatives from the Misurata-Islamist faction called for a boycott, and they insisted that 80 of the 200 members had stayed away, leaving only 120 in attendance. Their opponents, on the other hand, said 160 of the 200 members had attended, giving them a quorum without the Misuratans or Islamists. Tripoli, meanwhile, was darkened on Sunday by a thick black cloud of smoke spilling from an oil tank that had been set ablaze in the fighting — at least the second such oil fire ignited by the battle. Most foreign citizens had already fled the chaos, and most Western countries, including the United States and Britain, have closed their embassies. Thousands of Libyans have also fled across the border into Tunisia, and until Sunday a few thousand Egyptians who had worked in Tripoli were trapped just inside the border because Tunisia refused to admit them. But on Sunday, the Egyptian government began arranging bus rides to an airport for flights to repatriate them. “Fighting has spread to where we live,” the British ambassador, Michael Aron, wrote Friday in a Twitter message explaining the decision to close his embassy. “The risk of getting caught in the crossfire is too great. Very sad.” |