Dozens killed in Libya violence

Πηγή: FT
By Borzou Daragahi
March 29 2012

Dozens have been killed in violence between communities in the past several days in southern Libya, underscoring the country’s volatility after the downfall of Colonel Muammer Gaddafi.

Official media reported by late Wednesday that more than 50 people had been killed and 150 injured in clashes between rival armed groups in the main southern city of Sabha, which lies 170km from Libya’s Murzuk oilfields.

By Thursday, officials and a witness said, calm had been restored, with the government dispatching nearly 3,000 troops by land and air to re-establish order. A meeting of tribal elders had also helped to restore calm.

“Now the situation is quiet,” said Fadi Esmali, a freelance journalist in Sabha, reached by telephone. “I can hear the air force planes overhead bringing in more soldiers.”

The causes of the clashes, which pitted Arabs against Tabu tribesman, were murky. Some reports cited a dispute over a motor vehicle that spiralled out of control. But Mr Esmali said the violence had deeper roots in tensions between the two communities.

The Tabu, with ties to neighbouring Chad, had threatened to break away from Libya over perceived discrimination by the country’s new leaders. “If the need arises, we will demand international intervention and seek to establish a state like South Sudan,” Issa Abdul Majid Mansour, leader of the Tabu Salvation Front, declared on Wednesday, according to the English-language Libya Herald.

The Tabu were also subject to forced evictions and travel restrictions under Gaddafi. But many Libyans who supported the 2011 revolutionary war suspect them of having supported the former regime. Gaddafi imported hundreds of mercenaries from sub-Saharan Africa to help to quell the uprising.

However, Mr Esmali said the latest tensions had in fact arisen over how 5m Libyan dinars ($4m) in funds recently allocated by the interim National Transitional Council would be distributed among various constituencies in Sabha. “They fight for money, not for any other reason,” he said.

Many worry tensions could flare up again. Both sides in the fight are holding captives.

Tribal leaders in south Libya threaten to declare separate state after clashes with rivals

Πηγή: Washington Post
By AP
March 28 2012

TRIPOLI, Libya — A Libyan tribe is threatening to declare a separate state in Libya’s south after days of bloody battles.

The threats are the latest sign of chaos in Libya after the fall of longtime ruler Moammar Gadhafi last year.

Fighting between Tabu and the Arab Abu Seif tribe has left scores dead in the southern city of Sabha.

Tabu leaders said that they would declare their own state to protect their people. The Tabu, along with other African tribes, are the original inhabitants of south Libya.

Eissa Abdul-Maged, a Tabu leader, said Wednesday his tribe is subjected to “genocide,” but the Libyan government in Tripoli has not intervened.

A Paris-based Tabu leader, Jomode Elie Getty, accused the NTC of siding with Arabs in attacks on Tabu. He called for U.N intervention.

Tribal warfare rages in Libya

Πηγή: Winston-Salem Journal
By AP
Feb 22 2012

KUFRA, Libya -- Scores of civilians have been killed since Monday in tribal warfare in southern Libya, witnesses said Tuesday.

Moussa Bazama, an ambulance driver hauling the injured to the coast, said 50 people had been killed by the rockets, mortars and gunfire in residential areas of Kufra, a desert town.

Phone and other communications in the remote region, hundreds of miles from Libya's main population centers on the coast, are sporadic.

Lines of trucks and cars carrying hundreds of families are streaming out of the region on the highway north.

"The situation is extremely bad," said Abdel-Rehim al-Shewih, an engineer in Kufra contacted by phone. "It is about who kills the most every day."

He said shops were closed, no one could walk in the street, and if one tribe takes over one square, the other opens fire and drives it out.

For more than a week, the powerful Arab tribe of al-Zwia has clashed with the African Tabu tribe near Kufra, a border area where Libya, Chad and Sudan meet. The region is a hub for the smuggling of African migrants, goods and drugs.

The two groups are old rivals. The Tabu long had complained of discrimination under former Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi.

Since Feb. 11, the fighting has escalated, with smaller Arab tribes joining al-Zwia against the Tabu, residents of the area say.

On Tuesday, Mustafa Abdul-Jalil, the leader of Libya's ruling National Transitional Council, said that Gadhafi's regime loyalists are "seeding sedition" in Kufra. He declined to elaborate on which of the tribes is connected to the former regime.

NTC leaders often blame Libya's problems on remnants of Gadhafi's regime, usually without proof.