At least 22 Libyan soldiers were killed today in a protracted gunbattle at the al-Sidra port, where rebels in speedboats attempted to seize the largest of the country’s oil terminals.
The troops managed to damage three of the speedboats and finally repel the attackers, who were reportedly part of the Libya Dawn faction. A stray rocket set fire to one of the oil tanks on site, however.
Libya Dawn is one of many would-be rulers of Libya, which has faced a flurry of different factions since the NATO-imposed regime change, which installed a government which has struggled to maintain control of even its own parliamentary buildings.
Libya was once a major exporters of oil to Europe, and Italian companies have invested heavily in production there, though instability has meant intermittent outages and the nation rarely producing oil at the levels expected.
As usual,as in the case of the Ukraine,western media coverage here one sided and loaded with code words such Islamist,militants and so on.It is full of half baked truths mixed a lot of falsehood and inaccuracies and outright lies.
The western press,in this case Agence France Presse,is presenting news and information from one side while totally not just ignoring the other side but actually taking sides.
Also,we were told by this same western press that pro-Russian "rebels"shot down the Malaysian Airliner.Other source of information which is often ignored state quite different newline.The oil tank was set- alight by the same group that claim to be guarding it ,not as Agence France Presse chose to present it.
Those who are supposedly guarding the oil facilities are in reality not Libyan military but a criminal militia that has been in control of facilities for sometime now since late 2011.The so called "internationals recognized Libyan government now or before was never able to extend its control to the facilities to determinate of the whole Libyan economy.In the past,this same militia attempted to sell oil by itself outside of government.This same coverage gives the impression and leads one to believe that self declared renegade "general Hafter is a legitimate figure and his forces are too when in fact he is a criminal who brought destruction and wide spread atrocities to Libya second city which totally overlooked and defended by the shameful western media.
They keep calling "internationally recognized government" when the Supreme Court of Libya has deemed it invalid.Clearly,they do not care or respect that verdict.
" United States Navy commandos seized a renegade tanker carrying illicit Libyan oil in the Mediterranean southeast of Cyprus on Monday, thwarting a breakaway militia’s attempt to sell the oil on the black market. No shots were fired, no one was injured and the commandos captured three armed Libyans described by the ship’s captain as hijackers.
The predawn raid, carried out by about two dozen members of the Navy SEALs using high-speed boats from a nearby destroyer, rescued the fragile transitional government in Tripoli from a potentially catastrophic loss of control over its main source of revenue and last source of power: Libya’s vast oil reserves." http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/18/world/middleeas…
These are the same militia that are falsely called "Libyan military" guarding oil facilities.They are nothing but criminal gang of thieves.
In Tripoli, workers at a state oil firm that runs Es Sider port went on strike, urging the government to intervene because their colleagues were under duress from armed protesters.
"We are very angry at what is happening at Es Sider," said Salah Madari, an oil worker in the capital. "The port's control officer is being held at gunpoint," he said, adding that gunmen had also forced a pilot to guide the tanker into dock.
Jathran once led a brigade paid by the state to protect oil facilities. He turned against the government and seized Es Sider and two other ports with thousands of his men in August.
Tripoli has held indirect talks with Jathran, but fears his demand for a greater share of oil revenue for eastern Libya might lead to secession. http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/03/09/us-liby…
Mr Jathran was paid personally over $60million as bribe or ransom ,and has since continued to demand more and more.
In Benghazi, home to a university and a vibrant intellectual community largely sympathetic to the federalist cause, people see Jathran as a rural warlord exploiting chaos of post-revolt Libya to bully his way into politics.
"Ninety percent in Benghazi are not with Jathran because who Ibrahim Jathran is," said Youssef al-Gharyani, an activist who promotes Benghazi as economic capital and who works at state oil firm National Oil Corp (NOC).
"What is his education?," Gharyani said. "How can he lead?"
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/01/30/us-liby…
Anarchy of confusion — Not by accident when the West is playing deadly
Take the CIA backed General, who came on the scene this year without a gun to his name, yet now has a fleet of fighter-jets doing his bombing and an Army fit for a king. The one who was exiled from Libya by Gadaffi, who then went to spend 20 years living across from CIA Headquarters in Richmond Virginia USA, as in Empire USA.
He was not exiled ,but he was the commander of Gaddafi army in Chad where he was captured, whence Gaddafi denied any relation to him.He was airlifted to US and abandoned his troops to the mercy of the Chadians.He is as always an opportunist and power hungry .He was groomed and supported by France,Saudi Arabia,United Arab Emirates,and the Junta of Egypt.Each of these has their design on Libya and its resources.Recently he bought a huge mansion in Amman Jordan costing millions of dollars.The western press has presented him as a savior when in reality he has been a war criminal and brought so much death and destruction to Benghazi beyond description which the west and their media has chosen to cover up and totally ignore,while continuously providing biased and false narratives of events in Libya.
Many of the overage ,interestingly,originate in Dubai ,United Arab Emirates which has bankrolled and paid many western reporters and news agencies.
NATO- North Atlantic Terrorist Organization is nothing more than the military wing of the zionist-Rothchild banking criminals in the City of London. Of course the destruction of lIbya and the murder of Ghadaffi was in retaliation for that country's leader to announce the creation of a new gold based coin which would be used throughout Africa. This was an affront to thew zionist banking cabal and Ghadaffi had to be removed.
Washington provided the military equipment and men as did NATO and enlisted the aid of dangerous religious factions within Libya.
Washington is responsible for more death, destruction and chaos than any nation did during WW II.
Everywhere Washington goes, death, destruction, chaos and untold human misery are in its wake.
Sooner or later, as Chalmers Johnson once explained, Blow Back would become a major concern for the CIA (Cocaine Importers of America).