Suspension of all flights at Libya airport

Fighting between rival brigades in Libya’s capital and airport has forced the withdrawal of United Nations staff, the organization's top envoy to the country told the Security Council on Thursday.

Tarek Mitri, special representative of the Secretary-General for Libya, said that the current escalation initially started as a minor incident on July 5 between elements from rival brigades at a checkpoint near a United Nations compound, but rapidly spread into a series of major clashes across the capital, with the battle for the [international] airport becoming an all-out confrontation between two rival groups and resulting in the suspension of all flights.

This fighting, along with a marked surge of conflict in the east of the country over the past few days, particularly in Benghazi where the airport was also being shelled and had suspended operations, engendered “a mounting sense of a probable imminent and significant escalation in the conflict”, he said.