TRIPOLI, Libya — Gunmen tried to kill the head of the Libyan army Saturday in a bold daylight attack in the country’s capital, setting off hours of intense gun battles along the main highway to the airport. Assailants in Tripoli also attacked one of Libya’s largest military bases.
The gunmen were thought to be from renegade groups of former rebel fighters. The violence deepens concerns about unity among the ex-rebels — many of whom remain heavily armed — while the police and military struggle to restructure their forces after the overthrow of Moammar Khadafy.
Military officials said revolutionary fighters from the western mountain town of Zintan were likely behind the violence. They spoke on condition of anonymity because an investigation was underway.
The violence began in the morning with the attack on the army chief of staff’s convoy as it moved from his home in Tripoli to the military headquarters, said a military spokesman, Sgt. Abdel-Razik el-Shibahy.
A group of armed men at a mock checkpoint tried to stop them, but Gen. Khalifa Hifter’s convoy swerved from the checkpoint and drove over a nearby bridge, where they were shot at by two gunmen positioned on the other side, el-Shibahy said.
The military spokesman said no one in the convoy was harmed and soldiers arrested the two gunmen, who are in military custody.
Minutes later, a second army convoy heading down the same road was ambushed, apparently by the same group of gunmen at another phony checkpoint. Soldiers firing AK-47 rifles wounded two gunmen, el-Shibahy said.
By nightfall, gun battles raged between gunmen and the National Army along Tripoli’s airport road, according to an Associated Press reporter near the scene. A solider who was involved in the battles, Saddam Fakry, said the army shelled the gunmen’s positions.
Hifter’s predecessor, military chief Abdel-Fattah Younis, was killed in late July. At the time, rebels insisted it was the work of Khadafy’s regime, but several witnesses said Younis was killed by fellow rebels. Libya’s new leaders have tread cautiously in seeking to persuade former fighters to disarm, stopping short of demanding their weapons until the interim government can deliver on promises of jobs and training.
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