Tripoli: Gunmen attacked an interior ministry unit tasked with protecting the outgoing Libyan government, adding to mounting political and security turmoil, officials announced on Wednesday.
“The government strongly condemns the attack on an interior ministry force in charge of protecting the government,” the cabinet office said in a statement, without reporting casualties.
The attack in Tripoli on Tuesday night was the work of “outlaws”, said the government of outgoing Prime Minister Abdullah Al Thani, who has resigned and is due to hand over to his contested successor, Ahmad Mateeq.
Witnesses said a pro-Islamist militia was behind the raid on the interior ministry unit, which opposes the nomination of Mateeq, himself targeted in an attack hours earlier.
The unit, which the outgoing administration had called in for its protection only hours earlier, was evicted from the cabinet offices.
Libya’s interim parliament, the General National Congress (GNC), passed a vote of confidence in a Mateeq-led government, which critics have charged was “illegally elected” and imposed by Islamists.
On Tuesday, gunmen attacked the family home of Mateeq, who was elected prime minister this month in a chaotic GNC vote, after Thani resigned in April claiming he and his family had been targeted.
The premier and his family were in the Tripoli house at the time but escaped unharmed.
Amid the turmoil in Libya three years after a Nato-backed uprising ousted longtime dictator Muammar Gaddafi, the US State Department called on Americans to leave the country immediately.
Libya has been dogged by power struggles among rival former rebel militias and is awash with arms.
