Guterres 'deeply concerned' after clashes at air base leave 141 dead

NEW YORK - United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Saturday called on all parties to restore calm in southern Libya after clashes at an air base there killed more than 140 people.

The UN chief is "deeply concerned" about the military escalation at the Brak al-Shati air base and "calls on all parties to exercise restraint and restore calm," said his spokesperson in a statement.

Flighting at the air base between the armed forces and a rival militia killed 141 people, a military spokesman said in Libya on Friday.

Guterres noted that continued insecurity in Libya is a reminder that there is no military solution.

"The secretary-general therefore urges all key Libyan stakeholders to recommit to the political dialogue and engage constructively toward that goal," said the statement.

Libya has been suffering insecurity and chaos since the fall of Muammar Gaddafi's regime in 2011. The country is plagued with unrest and political division.

The attack at Brak Al-Shati air base shattered a truce in the area, which in recent months had become a flashpoint between military alliances based in eastern and western Libya.

It risks a major escalation in a stop-start conflict between eastern-based factions and rivals loosely aligned with current and former governments in the capital, Tripoli.

Ahmed al-Mismari, a spokesman for the eastern-based Libyan National Army, said 103 of those killed in the attack at the air base were LNA troops, most of them from the 12th Brigade stationed there.

They were attacked by a brigade from the western city of Misrata known as the Third Force, which previously controlled the base and is nominally aligned with the UN-backed Government of National Accord in Tripoli.

Earlier on Friday, the mayor of Brak al-Shati and a medical source in the town put the death toll at 89, though the medical official said some bodies had not been brought to the hospital. Mismari said some of the bodies were only collected on Friday.

It was not possible to independently verify the number of casualties. Local and LNA officials have said some of those killed were civilians who appeared to have been summarily executed.

Mohamed Gliwan, a spokesman for the Third Force, told local TV that LNA troops who were killed inside the base were armed.

GNA Prime Minister Fayez Seraj announced that he was suspending both Defence Minister Mahdi al-Barghathi and Third Force commander Jamal Traiki, "until it is determined who was responsible for violating the ceasefire" .

He condemned the escalation at Brak al-Shati "in the strongest terms" and called for an immediate cease-fire.

The LNA has said Islamist militants and the Benghazi Defence Brigades, whose members previously fought the LNA in Benghazi, also took part in the attack.

Mismari said the LNA had carried out airstrikes in the Sabha and Jufra regions in response to the attack.

Also on Friday, a car bomb south of Benghazi killed a prominent tribal leader linked to the LNA along with five other people. The blast in Suluq, 50 kilometers south of Benghazi, also wounded 26 people, a medical source said.

The LNA has been fighting a three-year campaign against Islamist militants and other opponents in Benghazi and other parts of eastern Libya.

Xinhua - Reuters