Panafrican News Agency

Libya calls on UN Security Council to put pressure on Haftar to withdraw his troops

Tripoli, Libya (PANA) - Libya has called on the international community to intervene politically and put pressure on Marshall Khalifa Haftar to withdraw his onslaught on Tripoli and end the bloodshed on Libyans.

The call was made by the Libyan minister of foreign affairs, Mohamed Siala, as the Libyan national armed forces, led by Haftar continued with his offensive on the western region of the capital, Tripoli.

"We don’t want any foreign interference to support anyone of the two sides," said Mr Siala in a news briefing on Friday evening in Tripoli.

The UN Security Council, which met twice in a closed session, did not adopt any resolution forcing troops to stop fighting. Instead, under the effects of the division of its members, it only called for restraint and the end of fighting which has claimed the lives for 75 and injured 323, in addition to thousands displaced.

‘’We want to continue looking for political solution and move another step towards the rebuilding of a state and achieve peaceful power transfer’’, added Mr Siala, who said that ‘’the Libyan presidential council chairman Fayez al-Sarraj, remains convinced that the crisis is not military but political and conforms with the UN resolution and the efforts made by the special UN envoy to support Libya’’.

The head of the Libyan diplomacy said that ‘’all Libyans are losing in the war around Tripoli and that the winner is actually the loser’’, denying the information that the defence forces of the capital, loyal to the government of national accord, are ‘’terrorists’’.

‘’Some of them belong to the presidential guard’’, he said, adding that ‘’most of them were motivated the same way they defended the city of Sirte and cleaned it of the terrorist organization Daesh’’.

The Libyan foreign affairs minister, however, called on ‘’intellectuals, wisemen and dignitaries of the cities and regions, tribes and inhabitants of the country to prevail on the parties to stop the fighting, end the conflicts and preserve the country from the blight of war.

‘’The war will not but bring about more tragedies, bloodshed and destructions’’, he said, adding that ‘’dialogue is the only way out of the current crisis,"

He added that ‘’countries were built through stability and development and are destroyed by wars fuelled by fighting for power’’.

The UN Office for coordination of humanitarian affairs (OCHA) said that more than 9,500 people have fled the fighting in the west of the country.

On Friday, the Tripoli section of the Libyan Red Crescent announced the evacuation of more than 200 families and 250 people of foreign nationalities from the heart of the fighting in the region of al-Sawani Beni Adam, in southern Tripoli.

More than 2,800 people are blocked in the fighting zones near Tripoli and do not have access to care or basic services, according to the UN Coordinator for humanitarian action in Libya, Maria Ribeiro.

-0- PANA BY/JSG/MSA/VAO 13April2019