Reports have the death toll at 15 today as the gunbattles in and around the Libyan capital of Tripoli enter their fourth day. The fighting between militias from Zawiya and the tribes of Warshefana is the latest in a growing number of faction splits in post-Gadhafi Libya.
The fighting began on Thursday night, when Zawiya forces say they were attacked by tribesmen who had previously been loyal to Gadhafi. Zawiya militias quickly set up checkpoints around the outskirts of the capital city, and a battle ensued.
The NTC insists that the two sides have reached an agreement that ended the fighting, but clashes continued to be reported through Sunday evening. The NTC dismissed the reports as the work of “fifh column” fighters from the Gadhafi regime.
The intense fighting is just the latest in a growing number of fights among factions nominally brought together during the Libyan civil war. It points to an increasingly unstable situation in which old feuds, briefly forgotten, are starting to reemerge as a driving force in a new round of fighting.
How unexpected. Who'd have thought such a thing might happen!
Well, everybody, actually.
seriously?! the bands of armed teenagers are not able to establish law and order in a country who's infrastructure has been destroyed, who would have guessed..
The "rebels" were not from Libya. The real people of Libya are now in the process of killing those armed thugs hired by NATO aka old colonial powers to steal the oil reserves of Libya. When they get all the arm thugs I suspect they will looking to get even with the people of the nations which make up NATO. There are thousands of missing weapons which will find a way to being used.
If anyone doubts that those weapons would go missing or that they'll turn up being used somewhere, go rent the old Nick Cage movie called "Lord of War". The only question is how many turned up in the hands of the merchants of death who have US or NATO connections, and how many turned up in the hands of other merchants of death.
Surely by now everyone is used to US' allies following up their 'victories' with waves of death squads and atrocities. Remember the railroad containers in Afghanistan where defeated enemies of the US allies were locked inside to suffocate and die. Or, remember the waves of ethnic clensing and near civil war in Iraq as US' allies settled scores there. Surely by now its very obvious and typical that the US' allies in a conflict tend to be the sort of people who start killing and torturing their surviving enemies as soon as they get a bit of power into their hands. This is situation normal for the US of A these days. The shining city on the hill has become the dark tower of Mordor looming over all, with the great eye of the NSA searching the world for enemies.