Libyan government announces airstrikes in western region

Libya’s government of national unity said it had carried out airstrikes against smuggling networks and blew up western cities home to militants supporting the hostile regime.

Three residents of Zawiya, just west of Tripoli, said they heard explosions on Thursday and one also heard gunshots.

The city has seen sporadic clashes this year between pro-GNU and anti-GNU factions.

The Tripoli-based government is not known to have its own air force, but allied Turkish forces have so far deployed drones in western Libya.

The GNU has announced that “Our Air Force” is targeting so-called criminal organizations involved in fuel, drug and human trafficking in the West Coast region.

Libya has been largely volatile since the 2011 NATO-backed uprising against Muammar Gaddafi, and although there has been no major war since a ceasefire in 2020, it has been in 2014 with rival Eastern factions. split into the West.

The GNU will be created in 2021 through a UN-backed process to unite Libya’s fragmented organization and oversee elections scheduled for that year.

But amid a dispute over the rules, no vote took place, and the eastern-based parliament announced that the GNU’s term had expired and that it had appointed a replacement government.

Most Western militants continued to support the GNU, as did Turkey, which helped the Tripoli government repel an offensive to the east in early 2020.

But some factions in the West are opposed to the GNU, and clashes broke out between them in Tripoli last summer when the parliament-appointed prime minister in eastern Libya tried to enter the capital.

The parliament-backed government on Thursday condemned indiscriminate attacks by so-called drones in several locations in Zawiya and another port of Maya, saying several ministry officials were injured.