TRIPOLI: Libya’s parliament-appointed prime minister Fathi Bashagha left the capital Tripoli on Tuesday, his office said, hours after his attempt to enter the city led to clashes between rival factions.
Bashagha’s government earlier said it had arrived in the capital, where the unity government has refused to cede power, prompting fighting between their militia backers.
Its press service announced “the arrival of the prime minister of the Libyan government, Mr. Fathi Bashagha, accompanied by several ministers, in the capital Tripoli to begin his work there.”
Clashes broke out between rival armed groups shortly after he entered the western city, an AFP journalist reported.
In February, the parliament in the eastern city of Tobruk designated former interior minister Bashagha as prime minister.
But he has failed to oust the Tripoli-based unity administration led by premier Abdulhamid Dbeibah, who has said repeatedly he will only cede power to an elected government.
Dbeibah’s government was formed in 2020 as part of United Nations-led efforts to draw a line under a decade of conflict since a NATO-backed revolt toppled dictator Muammar Qaddafi in 2011.
Dbeibah was to lead the country until elections last December, but they were indefinitely postponed and his political opponents argue that his mandate has now finished.
The rise of Bashagha’s government gives the North African country two rival administrations, as was the case between 2014 and a 2020 cease-fire.
Libya’s parliament-appointed prime minister quits Tripoli after clashes
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Libya’s parliament-appointed prime minister quits Tripoli after clashes
- Clashes break out between rival armed groups shortly after Fathi Bashagha enters the western city
Video shows armed men beating a Palestinian in West Bank
- The previous incident was in September and cost the business more than $600,000 as offices and facilities were damaged, he said
TEL AVIV: Dozens of masked men armed with sticks beat and injured a Palestinian in the Israeli-occupied West Bank when they attacked a plant nursery, according to people who saw the attack and video footage obtained by The Associated Press.
Video filmed by security cameras shows men dressed mostly in black, faces covered, with several hitting and kicking a man on the ground.
Two witnesses who are members of the family that owns the facility said Israeli settlers beat 67-year-old Basim Saleh Yassin as he was trying to flee the German-Palestinian-run nursery in the northern West Bank village of Deir Sharaf. Both spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal.
BACKGROUND
The attack is the latest in rising Israeli settler violence in the West Bank, where assaults increased during the Palestinian olive harvest in October and have continued.
Workers fled when they saw the settlers coming on Thursday but Yassin is deaf and couldn’t hear the warnings to leave, one family member said.
The witnesses said Yassin was in the hospital with broken bones in his hand and other injuries to his face, chest and back. Four cars at the nursery were burned.
The attack is the latest in rising Israeli settler violence in the West Bank, where assaults increased during the Palestinian olive harvest in October and have continued.
Israeli authorities have done little beyond issuing occasional condemnations of the violence.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called the perpetrators “a handful of extremists” and urged law enforcement to pursue them for “the attempt to take the law into their own hands.”
But rights groups and Palestinians say the problem is far greater than a few bad actors, and attacks have become a daily phenomenon across the territory.
Israel’s army said it dispatched soldiers to the Shavei Shomron junction — close to the area of Thursday’s attack — following reports of dozens of masked Israelis vandalizing property.
The army said it apprehended three suspects who were taken to police for questioning. It said security forces condemn violence of any kind.
According to one of the family members who own the nursery, it was the third time in a year that the facility was attacked.
The previous incident was in September and cost the business more than $600,000 as offices and facilities were damaged, he said.
In the video of Thursday’s attack, Yassin runs from a group of masked people before falling to the ground.
One man kicks him and another hits him twice with what appears to be a stick. Yassin stays on his knees as he’s struck again and then places his hands on the ground.
As the men are leaving, one kicks him in the head while others strike him again until he’s seen lying on the pavement.
