A suicide car bombing tore through the Army headquarters in western Benghazi today, killing at least 12 soldiers and wounding 35 others. Reports suggested that the soldiers were prayers in the administration building.
The troops targeted are loyal to Gen. Khalifa Hifter, who is nominally the leader of forces loyal to the Tobruk-based parliament. Hifter has a history of changing his allies on the fly, and has in recent months been focused on trying to take Benghazi, the main eastern city in Libya.
There was no claim of responsibility for the attack yet, but several Islamist factions are active in Benghazi, mostly local groups but some with some ties to international factions like al-Qaeda. The spokesman for military forces in the area denied reports that a top field commander was among the slain, though a battalion commander was said to have been killed.
This is the latest in a string of Eid al-Fitr attacks around the world, with many factions looking to use the biggest annual holiday in Islam as an occasion for major attacks, putting people in many countries around the Muslim world on edge.