adminAt least 20 pick-up trucks loaded with anti-aircraft guns blocked the roads while men armed with AK-47 and sniper rifles directed the traffic away from the building, witnesses said.
Tension between the government and armed militias have been rising in recent weeks since a campaign was launched to dislodge the groups from their strongholds in the capital.
Some 18 months after Gaddafi’s ouster by Western-backed rebels in 2011, Libya’s government is struggling to impose its authority on a myriad of armed groups who refuse to lay down their weapons and often take the law into their own hands.
Yesterday’s protest was to demand a law be passed banning officials who had worked for Gaddafi from occupying senior positions in the government. The legislation is under discussion but has yet to be approved.
“The Ministry of Foreign Affairs will remain closed until the political isolation law (against ex-Gaddafi officials) is implemented,” the commander of the militia told Reuters. He added that the foreign ministry had been targeted because some officials employed there had worked for Gaddafi.
On April 17, a Libyan passenger plane with some 150 passengers on board was shot at as it prepared to land at Tripoli airport but sustained no major damage, airline sources said.
The Buraq Air Boeing 737 was a few kilometres from the capital’s airport when the incident occurred. Sources said the airline temporarily suspended flights to and from Tripoli.
This was followed by an attack on the French embassy in Tripoli on April 23. A car bomb devastated France’s embassy in Tripoli, wounding two French guards, which had not seen major attacks like that which killed the US ambassador in Benghazi last year.
Since Gaddafi was toppled by Western-backed rebels in 2011, Tripoli, like the rest of the sprawling desert state, has been awash with weapons and roving armed bands, but violence in the city has not targeted diplomats before in the way Western envoys have been shot at and bombed in the east of the country. — Reuters.
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