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| Africa North |
| Libyan militia group looting in Sirte |
| 2017-01-27 |
| Tribal elders in Sirte have accused Bunyan Marsous forces, which are supposed to be keeping order in the town, of looting and seizing local properties. They also claim soldiers allied to BM have prevented Sirte residents from returning home by blocking the town’s entrance with sand barriers. They also say the BM men are stealing electricity cabling, thus producing power cuts as the town struggles to get back on its feet. Sirte has only one local militia, the 604 Brigade, which last week accused Islamist forces of trying to assert control over the area. Sirte’s mayor, Mukhtar Al-Madani, has continued to press the Presidency Council to compensate people whose homes were damaged in the fighting to retake the town from IS. In the Ghiza district ,where the terrorists made their final stand, virtually every building was destroyed. Last week Madani accused the PC of a complete lack of interest in the town and begged for help to remove the unexploded ordinance that still litters it. Sirte was badly damaged in 2011 because Qaddafi chose to make his own last stand there. Some 8,000 homes needed rebuilding at a cost of around $500 million. Now the town has been severely damaged all over again. Moreover there are widespread shortages, particularly of fuel This month, the PC allotted $7.6 million to help reopen Sirte’s main hospital, the Ibn Sina. A GNA official working on the Sirte crisis was quoted by Tripoli-based LANA as saying that petrol supplies were gradually being restored to the town. He did however admit that there were power problems but insisted that electricity engineers were hoping to fix the problems in the coming days. |
| Posted by:badanov |