ANSD : East Libyan forces to ‘secure oil sites’

MON 25 - 11 - 2024

Date: Jan 16, 2019
Source: The Daily Star

East Libyan forces to ‘secure oil sites’

_Reuters
BENGHAZI, Libya: Eastern forces loyal to commander Khalifa Haftar have launched a military operation in southern Libya to secure oil and gas facilities and fight extremists, a spokesman said Tuesday, a move that may alarm the authorities in Tripoli in the west. Haftar, whose power base is the eastern city of Benghazi, leads the Libyan National Army, which controls the east of the North African nation and major oil ports in the region.

“We announce the start of an operation to liberate the south,” LNA spokesman Ahmad Mismari told reporters in Benghazi.

He said the operation’s goals included protecting local and foreign oil firms, fighting Daesh (ISIS) and other extremists, and tackling illegal migration.

He gave few other details about the initiative, but any advance on oil fields in the south by Haftar’s forces could be opposed by Libya’s internationally recognized administration in Tripoli, which lies in the west of the OPEC nation.

Other military sources told Reuters several LNA units had moved in recent days from Benghazi to Sabha, the biggest city in the south of Libya that lies in the same southwestern region as Al-Sharara, Libya’s biggest oilfield.

Al-Sharara, more than 200 kilometers from Sabha, has been closed since December due to a protest by tribesmen and state guards demanding salary payments and development in the area.

It was not immediately clear whether the LNA forces were headed to Al-Sharara.

Haftar has become a major player in Libya since his forces seized Benghazi in 2017, after a three-year battle mainly with Islamist militants.

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