CAIRO: Daesh claimed responsibility for a gun attack on a checkpoint east of the Libyan capital Tripoli earlier this week, the group’s Amaq news agency said on Saturday.
Thursday’s attack took place between the towns of Zliten and Khoms on the coastal road leading from Tripoli to the port city of Misrata, an area in which members of the Islamist militant group are known to be operating, according to the Zliten mayor.
Amaq said “seven Libyan road security personnel were killed” in the attack by Daesh fighters, while around 10 more were wounded. It provided no evidence.
A local official and a resident on Thursday said at least four people had been killed in the attack, among them security personnel.
Libya has seen occasional attacks by Islamist militants who have benefited from the turmoil that followed a NATO-backed uprising in 2011.
Daesh has said it was behind a deadly attack by gunmen on the offices of the electoral commission in Tripoli in May and an attack on a court complex in Misrata last year.
Local forces drove the militant group from its former stronghold in Sirte, southeast of Misrata, in 2016, but Libyan and Western officials say militants have sought to regroup through mobile desert units and sleeper cells in northern towns.
The United Nations is leading efforts to prepare for national elections in Libya, which it hopes will reunify rival factions based in Tripoli and the east of the country.
Daesh claims responsibility for western Libya checkpoint attack
Daesh claims responsibility for western Libya checkpoint attack
- Amaq said “seven Libyan road security personnel were killed” in the attack by Daesh fighters
- Thursday’s attack took place between the towns of Zliten and Khoms
Israeli police kill Bedouin man during raid in southern Israel, local official says
- The shooting of 36-year-old Muhammed Hussein Tarabin threatened to worsen the already strained relations between the Israeli government and the country’s Bedouin minority
TEL AVIV: Israeli police shot and killed a Bedouin Arab man during an overnight raid in his village in southern Israel, according to media reports and a local official.
The shooting of 36-year-old Muhammed Hussein Tarabin threatened to worsen the already strained relations between the Israeli government and the country’s Bedouin minority.
Israeli police have been conducting a large-scale operation in the village of Tarabin for the past week in what they describe as a crackdown on local crime.
Talal Alkernawi, the mayor of the nearby town of Rahat, confirmed the man’s death.
Israeli police said they opened fire on a man who had “endangered” forces during an arrest raid.
The Israeli news site Haaretz cited relatives as saying Tarabin, whose family name shares the name of the village, was in his home.
In a video statement, Tarabin’s 11-year-old son, Hussein, said that men in uniform came to their house at night. He heard shots and saw his father’s body lying on the ground.
Israel’s far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who oversees the police force, expressed support for the police. “Anyone who endangers our police officers and fighters must be neutralized,” he posted on X.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday that the country would do everything to prevent the Negev desert in southern Israel from becoming the “wild south”. He congratulated Ben-Gvir on leading the initiative and said he would visit the region in the coming days.
Israel’s more than 200,000 Bedouin are the poorest members of the country’s Arab minority, which also includes Christian and Muslim urban communities. Israel’s Arab population makes up roughly 20 percent of the country’s 10 million people. While they are citizens with the right to vote, they often suffer discrimination and tend to identify with Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
The Bedouin sector has grappled with crime and poverty, and about one-third of its members live in villages that the Israeli government considers illegal. Israel says it is trying to bring order to a lawless area, but Bedouin leaders accuse the government of neglect, trying to destroy their way of life or pushing to relocate them to less desirable areas.
Residents say police have made around two dozen arrests in the village of Tarabin over the past week. Nati Yefet, a spokesman for the regional council of unrecognized villages in the area, said most have been quickly released.
“They’re looking for people, crime-related things, but they didn’t find anything,” Yefet said. He accused Ben-Gvir of intensifying the raids in the run-up to elections expected later this year.
Marwan Abu Frieh, of the Arab rights group Adalah, said Israel has stepped up house demolitions in recent years, leaving thousands of residents without shelter and worsening the plight of communities often denied basic services.
