Rival militias loyal to putschist Gen. Khalifa Haftar clashed on Thursday in the coastal city of Sirte for unknown reasons, military sources stated.
At least one person was killed and four others wounded during the clashes between militants from the Kaniyat Brigade, the 166th Brigade and the Versefane Brigade in Sirte, General Abdulhadi Dirah, the spokesperson for the Libyan army's Sirte-Jufra Joint Operations Unit, told Anadolu Agency (AA).
On Feb. 2 this year, a clash between pro-Haftar militias occurred in Sirte as the Tariq bin Ziyad Brigade launched an attack on the main headquarters of the Kaniyat Brigade.
The Kaniyat militia are known to have committed several war crimes and are reportedly behind the mass graves found in the Libyan Tarhouna province. Yet, the militia has still not been held accountable as people wait for justice.
The Kaniyat were a gang of six brothers who commanded a militia that traumatized the town of Tarhuna in war-ravaged Libya, systematically executing not only their opponents but slaughtering their entire families. Those they did not kill they cowed into submission. The brothers paraded through the town in a show of force – with a pair of leashed lions roaring at the crowd.
Now the brothers are gone, toppled from power, but their shadow still hangs over the town. After their ousting, digging began to exhume the corpses of the people they butchered. Multiple mass graves have been unearthed in the farming town some 80 kilometers (50 miles) southeast of the capital Tripoli. Some bodies were found blindfolded with their wrists tied.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) said at least 338 people were abducted or reported missing during the five-year rule of the Kaniyat before the city was freed from Haftar’s forces.
The United States last year unilaterally blacklisted the Kaniyat militia and its leader.
Haftar’s forces launched an offensive in April 2019 to try and capture Tripoli but the campaign collapsed last June.
The warring sides reached a cease-fire in October that virtually ended the war and paved the way for U.N.-led political talks. Those talks then led to the appointment of an interim government in February, ahead of elections later this year.
