Tunis: TunisAir has suspended flights to Libya's capital Tripoli after armed men swarmed the runway and stopped a plane from taking off, a company official said yesterday.
Flights were suspended until "an improvement in the security conditions", said Soulafa Mokaddem, a spokeswoman for Tunisair. Flights to Libya's second city, Benghazi, in the east, will continue, she said.
On Saturday afternoon, a TunisAir flight leaving from Tripoli's military airport of Maitiga carrying 50 wounded Libyans to be treated in Tunisia was stopped by 300 armed men, Tunisia's state news agency, TAP, said.
The fighters from the nearby suburb of Souq Juma stopped the plane from taking off and attempted to board the aircraft as a way of pressuring the government to investigate a recent attack on their comrades, the agency said, quoting a Tunisian diplomat in Libya.
On Wednesday, fighters from the same neighbourhood were ambushed by loyalists to the fallen Gaddafi regime near one of its former strongholds of Bani Walid 170km outside Tripoli, the report said. Some 15 fighters were killed.
The tense standoff was eventually resolved in negotiations that involved two members of the Tunisian embassy. Passengers were disembarked from the plane which then flew back to Tunisia, the report said.
