154 dead in two weeks of Libya clashes: hospital

Two weeks of clashes in western and southern Libya have killed at least 154 people and wounded 463, the health ministry said today.
It said the toll included those killed in ethnic clashes in the main southern city of Sebha and in Wershefana, west of the capital.
Security sources said they had launched a military operation this week against "armed gangs", allegedly including supporters of slain dictator Moammar Gaddafi, in Wershefana, seen as a bastion of loyalists to the former regime.
Earlier, the director of the hospital in Sebha in the south had said that 88 people had died and more than 130 wounded in the ethnic violence in the region.

"Between the outbreak of the fighting on January 11 and Friday evening, the number of dead totalled 88," Abdallah Ouheida told AFP.
He said the full death toll was likely to be higher as casualties had also been taken to other hospitals in the area.

He added there had been sporadic clashes today but no new casualties.
The fighting erupted between members of the Toubou minority, a non-Arab ethnic group, and armed Arab tribesmen of the Awled Sleiman.
There has since been fighting between the Awled Sleiman and other Arab tribes that is reported to have involved Gaddafi supporters.
Gaddafi loyalists have taken advantage of the chaos to launch repeated attacks on the city's Tamenhant air base, municipal council chief Ayub al-Zarruk said.

Libya's General National Congress declared a state of emergency in the south on January 18 at an extraordinary session convened to discuss the violence in Sebha.