Bargtati issued a statement to the Libyan news agency LANA tonight, saying that his recently-removed deputy, Siddiq Al-Ghaith had been behind an attempt to assassinate him, when gunnies opened fire on his vehicle at the Tobruk airbase.
The defence Minister also said that Ghaith's claims to Al-Jazeera
... an Arab news network headquartered in Qatar, notorious for carrying al-Qaeda press releases. The name means the Peninsula,as in the Arabian Peninsula. In recent years it has settled in to become slightly less biased than MSNBC, in about the same category as BBC or CBS...
TV, that the shooting had been a "tribal matter", were untrue.
There was much confusion after the incident, with a LANA news hound saying that the minister had not been targeted, but that his security detail had fired warning shots in the air, after a dispute broke out between military units at the airbase.
This was contradicted by the new deputy defence minister, Khalid Sharif, who told AFP: "As the minister prepared to leave the airport by car, his bodyguard shot it out with angry soldiers and ex-rebels, but the minister was not hurt."