A damaged aircraft is seen after shelling at Tripoli international airport yesterday.
Fire destroyed the terminal at Tripoli’s main airport yesterday, one day after it was seized by militia fighters from the Libyan city of Misrata, witnesses said.
Unidentified warplanes also attacked targets in the capital, residents said, the latest stage of the worst fighting in Libya since the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.
Tripoli residents heard jets followed by explosions at dawn but more details were not immediately available.
It was unclear who had burned the terminal and supporters of the rival factions took to social media to accuse each other.
The main building was completely torched, witnesses said. All planes in front of it were damaged, as well as many houses and office buildings on airport road.
A militia called Operation Dawn, consisting mainly of fighters from Misrata, said on Saturday that it had captured the airport from a rival faction from Zintan in western Libya.
However, it was deserted yesterday with Misrata forces deployed on the airport road and no sign of Zintani fighters.
In the campaign to overthrow Gaddafi, fighters from Zintan and Misrata were comrades-in-arms. But they later fell out and this year have turned parts of Tripoli into a battlefield, with the weak government unable to control armed factions.
The central government lacks a functioning national army and relies on militias for public security. While these forces receive state salaries and wear uniforms, they report in practice to their own commanders and towns.
Renegade general Khalifa Haftar, who has declared war on Islamist-leaning militias, claimed responsibility for air raids on Tripoli on Saturday and last Monday that targeted Operation Dawn.
Libya now faces the prospect of two competing parliaments.
In a challenge to a parliament elected on June 25, an Operation Dawn spokesman called for the old General National Congress, set up after the fall of Gaddafi, to be reinstated.
The Misrata forces have rejected the new House of Representatives, where liberals and lawmakers campaigning for a federalist system have made a strong showing.
The parliament has declared Operation Dawn as well as militant Islamists like the Ansar al-Shariah as “terrorist groups”.