Libya in new crisis as Islamist 'terrorists' seize airport

Fajr Libya yesterday had captured Tripoli's battered international airport

Islamist militias openly challenged the legitimacy of parliament after announcing their seizure of Tripoli airport, plunging Libya's rocky political transition into a fresh crisis today.

The militias, which the elected parliament branded as "terrorists", said the house had lost its legitimacy through its alleged complicity with a deadly air strike on the airport that they blamed on Egypt and the United Arab Emirates.

"The Emirates and Egypt are implicated in this cowardly aggression," Mohammed Hadia, spokesman for the Fajr Libya (Libya Dawn) militia, said yesterday.

Parliament, for its part, fired back at the militias which announced their seizure of Tripoli airport after a weeks-long battle against nationalist rivals for control of the strategic facility.

"The groups acting under the names of Fajr Libya and Ansar al-Sharia are terrorist groups and outlaws that are rising up against the legitimate powers," parliament charged in a statement.

The parliament, which sits in Tobruk, 1,600 kilometres east of the capital, said it was determined to deal with the challenge through the regular armed forces.

Fajr Libya is a coalition of Islamist militias, mainly from Misrata, east of the capital, while Ansar al-Sharia, which Washington also brands a terrorist group, controls around 80 percent of the eastern city of Benghazi.

"These two groups are a legitimate target of the national army, which we strongly support in its war to force them to halt their killings and hand over their arms," MPs said.

Fajr Libya yesterday it had captured Tripoli's battered international airport.

The announcement came a day after an unidentified warplane raided Islamist positions around the airport, killing 13 fighters, according to Fajr Libya which says it is defending the gains of the 2011 revolution.

The fall of the airport would be a major defeat for the nationalist fighters from Zintan, southwest of Tripoli, who have held it since the overthrow of long-time dictator Moamer Kadhafi in 2011.

Earlier today, Islamist militiamen attacked the Tripoli studios of private television station Al-Assima which supports the Zintan nationalists and kidnapped its crew, the station said.

Al-Assima, in a news bulletin, said equipment was destroyed and the crew went missing.

On the political front, the outgoing provisional General National Congress (GNC), which was dominated by Islamists, was to resume operations at the request of Fajr Libya, despite being superseded by parliament, its spokesman said.

Its members were summoned to meet in Tripoli, adding to the political chaos in Libya and splitting the North African state into two centres of power.