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| Africa North |
| Reported car-bomb attempt on LNA Saiqa commander foiled |
| 2017-03-30 |
| [Libya Herald] The commander of the Libyan National Army’s Saiqa Special Forces ...Libya's elite army unit, insofar as they have one, formed from a mixture of paratroopers and commandos. The group emerged from a militia with the same name in 2010. It now numbers a few thousand and reports to the Ministry of Defence. It deployed in Benghazi in an attempt to control the carnage. As a result, it has been attacked and several of its officers murdered. The force is popular in Benghazi for its stance against Ansar al-Sharia group... reportedly escaped a boom-mobileing in Benghazi today when an explosives-laden vehicle was spotted and made harmless. The silver Hyundai Sonata saloon without registration plates and with a rather poor paint job was apparently found near the route that Wanis Boukhamada was taking to attend the funeral of Saleh Jouda, the pilot whose Mig-21 crashed into a Tobruk house today. According to Saiqa information officer Riyad al-Shuhibi the explosives in the vehicle were hard to detect and had been rigged sophisticatedly. Though Shuhibi didn’t say it, the detonation would have been made remotely, presumably as Boukhamada’s convoy passed by. Film of engineers making the boom-mobile safe showed them pulling a radio unit and antenna from inside the dashboard. However, a hangover is the wrath of grapes... the film also showed that the car had been left on rough ground between a two-storey building and a high wall, with no sign of a nearby road down which Boukhamada’s convoy would have passed. Given the amount of artillery and mortar shells that LNA engineers were filmed taking out of the vehicle and casually piling some distance away from it, it is clear that had it been detonated the kaboom would have been considerable. Two months ago another Saiqa Special forces commander, Colonel Mahmoud al-Warfali, who has since been implicated in war crimes, survived a car kaboom in Gwarsha as his convoy passed a petrol station on its way to the then-besieged Lion of Islam enclave of Ganfouda. Saiqa sources are saying that today’s planned boom-mobileing would have been in response to the final reduction of the 12 Buildings complex after a siege of almost five weeks. The Saiqa information officer did not given the location of the vehicle but sources have suggested that it was near Benina. |
| Posted by:Fred |