According to local media and an elected official from the town, at least two persons were killed and a number of others were injured on Sunday when the Libyan government launched drone airstrikes on the outskirts of Zawiya (west) as part of an official operation against traffickers’ locations.
“Drone air strikes targeted sites in the port of al-Maya near Zawiya for the second consecutive day,” the Libya al-Ahrar channel reported on Sunday evening, publishing a video of a boat on fire in the port surrounded by a thick column of black smoke.
“My nephew Mohamad Bouzrebah was hit in the raid on al-Maya,” lamented MP Ali Bouzrebah, who was elected in the town of Zawiya, 45 km west of Tripoli, on his Facebook account, reporting the deaths of two other men.
A significant oil refinery is located near Zawiya, around ten kilometres from the port of al-Maya.
On Sunday night, social media was flooded with videos of the strike, the second in two days, as well as images of those killed and the MP’s nephew who was hospitalised with injuries. The MP had claimed on Friday that a drone had struck his residence without anyone being hurt.
The UN-recognised government of national unity in Tripoli declared on Thursday that it had carried out “precise and targeted air strikes against the hideouts of fuel, drug, and human trafficking gangs in the western coastal region.”
The Tripoli administration has not provided updates on the strikes’ progress, targets, or outcomes since declaring the commencement of the operation, which has gone on without a break ever since.
Since Muammar Gaddafi’s rule was overthrown in 2011, oil-rich Libya has been divided by conflicts fueled by the growth of armed factions with shifting allegiances.
Two governments have been vying for power for the past year; one in Tripoli (west), led by Abdelhamid Dbeibah and recognised by the UN, and the other in the east, backed by the powerful Marshal Khalifa Haftar and the parliament based in Tobruk.