Benghazi: Libya’s elected parliament has rejected the new cabinet of Prime Minister Abdullah Al Thinni, a parliamentary spokesman said on Thursday.

Lawmakers demanded Al Thinni submit a new cabinet with not more than 10 ministers, Faraj Hashim said. Al Thinni had on Wednesday presented a cabinet with 16 ministers.

Al Thinni, a former career soldier, has been the oil producer’s acting prime minister since March. He stood down after June elections and the new parliament reappointed him at the start of this month.

His administration has failed to impose order on a fragmenting country, and many observers fear Libya is heading for civil war.

Armed militias and Islamists who backed the rebellion to overthrow Muammar Gaddafi in 2011 have kept their weapons, staking claims to territory, oil and other resources.

An armed group from the western city of Misrata seized the capital Tripoli in August and forced the elected parliament to move to the east of the country. The Misrata group has set up its own parliament and government, which are not internationally recognised. Meanwhile, a former Libyan air force chief was shot dead overnight in Benghazi, medical and army sources said on Thursday.

“Unidentified gunmen killed former air force chief of staff general Ahmad Habib Al Mesmari in the Al Hadaek district” in the city centre, a senior air base officer in Benghazi told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Mesmari stood down as air force chief of staff in April after attending a meeting with renegade general Khalifa Haftar whom the then authorities in Tripoli accused of staging a coup d’etat.

A hospital source in Benghazi said he had been “hit by several bullets”. Meanwhile, Libyan army chief General Abdul Razzaq Al Nazouri Thursday called for “jihad” against “outlaws” amid clashes between Islamist militias and their rivals, including some army units. In a move apparently aimed at the Islamist militias and allied forces who have captured Tripoli and most of Libya’s second largest city Benghazi, Al Nazouri called on all members of the army to join their units immediately. The army chief, appointed in August by the country’s new parliament, called on “Libya’s youth” to “join the jihad against the Kharijites and outlaws” - in a reference to a notoriously extreme early Islamic sect.

Months of clashes have pitted Islamist militias and local allies, including forces from the powerful western town of Misrata, against rivals in Tripoli, Benghazi and other areas.

The House of Representatives, meeting in the small eastern port town of Tobruk for security reasons, has swung behind the anti-Islamist forces, declaring the main Islamist militias to be terrorist organizations.

The Islamists in Tripoli have retaliated by reinstalling the former interim parliament, the General National Congress, whose term of office expired in February.

Libyan authorities have failed to build up coherent security forces since the downfall of Muamar Gaddafi, relying instead on a plethora of militias that sprang up during the 2011 revolt against the long-time ruler.

But those militias have now become polarised along political and regional lines, raising the prospect of nationwide civil strife.