BENGHAZI: Libyan forces loyal to strongman Khalifa Haftar has launched an aerial assault on a Chadian rebel headquarters in the southern desert Friday, his office stated.
The stop-start battle which has gripped Libya for the last 12-year has seen its opponents forge alliances with several rebel groups in neighbouring Sudan and Chad. The air force of Haftar’s LNA bombed Chadian rebel positions on the Libyan side of the border, before launching an aerial attack, its press office stated on Friday evening.
Libya: Haftar Launches Attack on Chad Rebels
The instant target was an incomplete housing compound in the remote base of Umm al-Araneb in Murzuq region, where over 2,000 houses under construction have been taken over by rebel groups, LNA chief press officer Khalifa al-Obeidi said.
Khalifa Haftar’s son Saddam, who oversees ground forces, was “at the Chadian border to command the operations in order to cleanse the region of armed groups,” Obeidi maintained. Haftar’s spokesperson Ahmad al-Mesmari pledged that the LNA forces would “no longer permit armed groups to use Libyan soil to launch assaults against neighbouring nations”.
However, forces loyal to strongman Khalifa Haftar did not specify which Chadian rebel faction was the target of its air operation.
Earlier, Chad’s transitional President M Idriss Deby Itno visited the far north to rally his forces after an assault by Military Command Council for the Salvation of the Republic, which has been very active in the region.
