The World Health Organization (WHO) said on Friday that it feared outbreaks of infectious diseases due to dirty water and people fleeing fighting nearing Tripoli, where it has about two weeks of emergency supplies for hospitals and health facilities.
The internationally recognized government in Libya's Tripoli once again faces a challenge from Gen. Khalifa Haftar who has been controlling the country's east. Haftar's push on Tripoli in Libya's northwest is the latest turn in a cycle of factional violence and chaos dating back to the ouster of former President Moammar Gadhafi in 2011 and NATO's aerial operations. A war plane belonging to the eastern Libyan forces on Friday attacked a military camp of a force allied to the internationally recognized government near the western town of Zuwara, an eastern military source and residents said. The air strike is the closest yet to an oil and gas facility since eastern forces started an offensive on the capital Tripoli a week ago. Zuwara is west of the oil and gas port of Mellitah, co-operated by Italy's ENI and Libyan state oil firm NOC.
After a week of fighting, 75 people have been killed and 323 wounded, including seven civilians killed and 10 wounded, Dr. Syed Jaffar Hussain, the WHO representative in Libya, told a Geneva news briefing by telephone from Tripoli. The WHO has delivered trauma kits and medicines to hospitals, he said, adding: "These supplies will last for two weeks, the acute phase." So far 6,000 have fled the fighting but WHO has contingency plans in case "thousands if not hundreds of thousands" are displaced in the acute phase of fighting.
As well as the toll on civilians, the renewed conflict threatens to disrupt oil supplies, increase migration across the Mediterranean to Europe, derail a U.N. peace plan and encourage militants to exploit the chaos. Libya is a main transit point for migrants who have poured into Europe in recent years, mostly trafficked by smuggling gangs.
Libya has remained dogged by turmoil since 2011 when a NATO-backed uprising led to the ouster and death of former President Gadhafi after more than four decades in power. Since then, Libya's stark political divisions have yielded two rival seats of power, one in Tobruk and another in Tripoli and a host of heavily armed militia groups. The military push by Haftar's LNA, allied with a parallel eastern administration based in Benghazi, marked a dangerous escalation of a power struggle that has dragged on since the overthrow of former leader Gadhafi. Haftar is not recognized by the international community, as the elected parliament of the country is centered in Tripoli. However, Haftar, with financial and political support from certain countries, including some Gulf states, has appeared as an influential actor in the war-torn country.