Libya’s Fighting Between Rivals Militias Goes On

Last week, 9 people were killed in a clash between militias around  Gharyan (50 miles from Tripoli). The fight started when the Gharyan militia wanted to arrest people in Assabia suspected to have ties with the former President Muammar Gadhafi’ s regime. The Assabia militia rejected the accusations.  Following the clash, BBC reported that the leader of the Assabia militia Izzedine al-Ghool died after being detained and tortured by the Gharyan militia. A member of the Gharyan council commented that the officials were often powerless to control the militias in the region. Since the end of former regime, Libya has been subjected to instability. In the beginning of the year, the Chairman of the National Transitional Council (NTC) Mustafa Abdel Jalil  expressed his concerns that a civil war could break out if the militias were not brought under control.

On Thursday,  Official spokesman for the NTC Abdelhafiz Ghoga  was escorted away after being mobbed by students at the University of Ghar Yunis in  Benghazi. Ghoga was accused of opportunism because of his belated defection from Gadhafi’s regime. Students have been demonstrating on the Ghar Yunis campus for weeks to protest against the perceived lack of transparency of the administration that took over after Gadhafi’s government and the prominent position in it of a number of his longtime lieutenants.