BENGHAZI: Battles raged on several fronts in Libya on Friday after a night of heavy bombardment in Tripoli, combatants and residents said, despite the threat continued fighting poses to efforts to stop the coronavirus pandemic.
Serious warfare resumed this week after a comparative lull in recent weeks, defying international calls for calm to allow Libya’s fragmented and overstretched health system to prepare for any spread of the coronavirus.
Libya confirmed its first case of the highly infectious respiratory disease on Monday — a Libyan man recently returned from overseas. After years of instability and violence, much of the North African country’s medical infrastructure is in ruins, hospitals and clinics have been targeted, and many doctors and nurses have not been paid since December.
The Libyan National Army (LNA) of eastern-based commander Khalifa Haftar has been assaulting Tripoli for nearly a year, hoping to capture the capital in the northwest where the internationally recognized Government of National Accord (GNA) is based.
The United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Russia have been supporting the LNA militarily, while Turkey and allied Syrian fighters are backing the GNA.
Diplomacy has foundered, with the latest round of talks in Geneva making no progress toward a political solution last month, and the UN envoy resigning for health reasons.
Before he quit, he warned that the arms embargo on Libya was being routinely violated, with foreign weaponry and fighters arriving in the country to join both sides.
On Thursday, the European Union said it would launch a new naval and air mission to stop further breaches of the embargo.
Huge explosions rattled Tripoli from midnight onwards, with artillery fire echoing around the city on Friday morning, according to residents.
Fierce clashes were reported in the west of Libya, between Tripoli and the Tunisian border, in the capital’s southern suburbs, and in the frontline region between Sirte and Misrata to the east of Tripoli.
An LNA military source said fighting had resumed at dawn on Friday west of Sirte, a port city in central Libya captured by the LNA in January. The media office for pro-GNA forces did not comment.
The United Nations “is alarmed that hostilities have continued in and around Tripoli despite the announced humanitarian pause,” a UN statement said on Friday.
Fighting escalates in Libya despite coronavirus threat
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Fighting escalates in Libya despite coronavirus threat
- Serious warfare resumed this week after a comparative lull in recent weeks
Turkiye’s Kurdish party says Syria deal leaves Ankara ‘no excuses’ on peace process
- Turkish officials said earlier on Monday that the Syrian integration deal, if implemented, could advance the more than year-long process with the PKK, which is based in northern Iraq
ANKARA: Turkiye’s pro-Kurdish DEM Party said on Monday that the Turkish government had no more “excuses” to delay a peace process with the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) now that a landmark integration deal was achieved in neighboring Syria.
On Sunday in Syria, the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) agreed to come under the control of authorities in Damascus — a move that Ankara had long sought as integral to its own peace effort with the PKK.
“For more than a year, the government has presented the SDF’s integration with Damascus as the biggest obstacle to the process,” Tuncer Bakirhan, co-leader of the DEM Party, told Reuters, in some of the party’s first public comments on the deal in Syria.
“The government will no longer have any excuses left. Now it is the government’s turn to take concrete steps.” Bakirhan cautioned President Tayyip Erdogan’s government against concluding that the rolling back Kurdish territorial gains in Syria negated the need for a peace process in Turkiye.
“If the government calculates that ‘we have weakened the Kurds in Syria, so there is no longer a need for a process in Turkiye,’ it would be making a historic mistake,” he said in the interview.
Turkish officials said earlier on Monday that the Syrian integration deal, if implemented, could advance the more than year-long process with the PKK, which is based in northern Iraq. Erdogan urged swift integration of Kurdish fighters into Syria’s armed forces.
Turkiye, the strongest foreign backer of Damascus, has since 2016 repeatedly sent forces into northern Syria to curb the gains of the SDF — which after the 2011–2024 civil war had controlled more than a quarter of Syria while fighting Islamic State with strong US backing.
The United States has built close ties with Damascus over the last year and was closely involved in mediation between it and the SDF toward the deal.
Bakirhan said progress required recognition of Kurdish rights on both sides of the border.
“What needs to be done is clear: Kurdish rights must be recognized in both Turkiye and Syria, democratic regimes must be established, and freedoms must be guaranteed,” he said.
Meanwhile, outlawed Kurdish militants in Turkiye said they will “never abandon” Kurds in Syria following the offensive by Damascus.
You should know that we will not leave you alone. Whatever the cost, we will never leave you alone.. we as the entire Kurdish people and as the movement, will do whatever is necessary,” Murat Karayilan of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) was quoted as saying by Firat.
Karayilan said the Damascus-led offensive was an “attempt to nullify” the peace process in Turkiye.
“This decision by international powers to enable these attacks, will be a black mark for the US, the UK, Germany, France and other international coalition states,” he said.
On Monday, at least 500 people rallied in Turkiye’s Kurdish-majority city of Diyarbakir against the Syrian offensive. Clashes erupted when pollice tried to break up the protest.
The pro-Kurdish DEM party, the third largest force in the Turkish parliament, called for a rally on Tuesday in the town of Nusaybin, located on the border with Syia.
*With Reuters and AFP
