(Tripoli) At least two people were killed and several others injured on Sunday in airstrikes carried out in the vicinity of Zawiya (west) by the Libyan government as part of an operation officially launched against smugglers’ positions, according to local media and an elected official from the city.
“Drone airstrikes targeted sites at al-Maya port near Zawiya for the second day in a row,” Libya al-Ahrar TV reported on Sunday evening, which posted a video of a burnt-out boat in the port surrounded by a thick column of black smoke.
“My nephew Mohamad Bouzrebah was hit in the raid against al-Maya,” said MP Ali Bouzrebah, elected from the city of Zawiya, located 45 km west of Tripoli, on his Facebook account, expressing the deaths of two other men.
The port of al-Maya is about ten km from Zawiya, a town which is home to a major oil refinery.
Videos of the strike, the second in two days, circulated on social media on Sunday evening, along with photos of those killed, and of the MP’s injured nephew in his hospital bed. On Friday, the deputy indicated that a drone had fallen on his home, without causing any casualties.
On Thursday, the Defense Ministry of the UN-recognized government of national unity, based in Tripoli, announced that it had launched “precise and targeted airstrikes against the caches of gangs of fuel, narcotics and human beings in the Western Coast region”.
After the announcement of the start of this operation, which has continued without interruption since, the Tripoli government has not communicated any more on the progress of the strikes, their targets or the results.
Since the fall of Muammar Gaddafi’s regime in 2011, oil-rich Libya has been plunged into chaos and plagued by divisions fueled by the proliferation of armed groups with shifting allegiances.
Two governments have been vying for power there for a year: one based in Tripoli (west), led by Abdelhamid Dbeibah and recognized by the UN, the other in the east, supported by the powerful Marshal Khalifa Haftar and by the Parliament based in Tobruk.