LNA

Tunisian union blames Hafter over disappearance of Tunisian journalists

Published on 20 Settembre 2017 in AFRICA/PRESS RELEASE/REGIONS by pressrelease

The National Union of Tunisian Journalists (SNJT) has blamed the head of the Libyan National Army (LNA), Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar, for the failure to discover what happened to Tunisian journalists Sofiene Chourabi and Nadhir Ktari who disappeared three years ago near Ajdabiya. The SNJT claim that the area where they vanished was under Haftar’s control at the time and that subsequently those linked to the LNA did nothing to help solve the mystery.While the union has not actually blamed Hafter and the LNA for the abductions, it denounced what it called the “suspicious silence” of all the Libyan parties “who are called upon to show good faith in handling this issue”. Although there have been some allegations that the abductors were Salafists linked to Hafter, it is generally believed that the two were captured by Islamists linked to the so-called Islamic State (IS), or at least passed on to them.

LNA in fresh clashes east of Sirte

Units of the Libyan National Army (LNA) clashed yesterday with an armed group some 90 kilometres east of Sirte, near Harawa. Air force jets were brought in to attack the force and claim to have destroyed three vehicles and killed a number of fighters. According to one LNA source, the clashes involved fighters from the so-called Islamic State (IS).Both the LNA and the rival Bunyan Marsous operations room says that IS is increasingly active in the area again.According to another LNA report, however, the group involved in yesterday’s fighting belonged to the Benghazi Defence Brigades (BDB).In fact, the LNA now regularly conflates the BDB and IS. However, although separate, there are suggestions that they collaborate and overlap.

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