Escalating Libya conflict alarms world, US pulls some troops outTRIPOLI, Libya: The military conflict shaking Libya escalated on Sunday as forces of strongman Khalifa Haftar launched an airstrike on a suburb of Tripoli and the UN-backed government vowed a major counteroffensive.The UN called for an urgent two-hour truce for the southern outskirts of the capital to allow evacuations of civilians and the wounded. Libya has been riven by chaos since the NATO-backed uprising in 2011 that killed Muammar Qaddafi, with rival administrations and armed groups vying for power. Amid an upsurge of fighting in the North African country, the US military said it had temporarily pulled some of its forces out. It did not detail how many military personnel had been withdrawn from Libya. “To date, Haftar’s operation has mostly failed to go according to plan, and it has now galvanized western Libyan forces against him,” said analyst Wolfram Lacher.

Source: The North Africa Journal April 07, 2019 10:52 UTC