Libya official: Car bomb explodes near LNA leaders, 4 killed

Two bomb-laden vehicles exploded Thursday near a group of Libyan National Army leaders in their eastern stronghold of Benghazi, killing four people and wounding 33 others and casting doubt on the LNA's 3-month-old offensive on Tripoli, the UN-backed government's capital.

The spokesman for the Benghazi-based rival government's Interior Ministry, Tarek El-Kharraz, said several senior LNA figures, including the commander of LNA special forces, had gathered in western Benghazi to attend the funeral service of a high-ranking military general.

El-Kharraz said the dead in the attack included two civilians and two soldiers, and the wounded included civilians, army personnel and police. He said none of the military leaders was killed or wounded.

Since Moammar Gadhafi's ouster in 2011, Libya has been split between rival governments in the east and the west and an array of militias fighting over power and oil fields.

The LNA, loyal to the rival government in the east, launched an offensive on Tripoli in April, setting off fierce fighting that has threatened to plunge the country into another bout of violence on the scale of the 2011 conflict that ousted longtime dictator Gadhafi and led to his death.