HNEC Says Libya’s Stability Linked to Staging Elections

The head of Libya's National Elections Commission, Emad Al-Sayeh met with President of Türkiye’s Supreme Election Council Ahmed Yener in Ankara (HNEC)
The head of Libya's National Elections Commission, Emad Al-Sayeh met with President of Türkiye’s Supreme Election Council Ahmed Yener in Ankara (HNEC)
TT

HNEC Says Libya’s Stability Linked to Staging Elections

The head of Libya's National Elections Commission, Emad Al-Sayeh met with President of Türkiye’s Supreme Election Council Ahmed Yener in Ankara (HNEC)
The head of Libya's National Elections Commission, Emad Al-Sayeh met with President of Türkiye’s Supreme Election Council Ahmed Yener in Ankara (HNEC)

The head of Libya's National Elections Commission, Emad Al-Sayeh, said on Saturday that staging Libya’s elections was “an important and crucial issue for the political future of Libya.”

Sayeh visited Ankara this week to learn about the Turkish experience in holding and organizing elections.

There, he met with members of Türkiye’s Supreme Election Council and its president, Ahmed Yener.

“We followed the course of the elections in Türkiye and all the technical details related to it,” Al-Sayeh said, adding that all Turkish parties had accepted the results of the latest elections due to the positive work of the Supreme Election Council.

“There is no room for peaceful deliberation on power except through the ballot boxes,” he said.

At the Council’s headquarters, Al-Sayeh noted that he inspected in Türkiye the equipment used in the field of election management and listened to presentations explaining the institutional structure of the Council, its legislations, and the systems and technical procedures by which the electoral process was managed.

In a separate development, Abdulhamid al-Dbeibah, the head of Libya's Tripoli-based Government of National Unity (GNU), pledged on Saturday to support the victims of the flood-affected areas in the east of the country.

On Saturday, the GNU and the General Electric Company (GEC) said they had completed the maintenance of the electrical network in the industrial zone within the city of Derna and restored full power to the area.

They also noted that teams from the Libyan Emergency Medicine and Support Center (EMSC) have recovered six bodies from the Wadi Umm al-Barakat area east of the city. The bodies are victims of the floods that swept through the city where a hurricane-strength storm lashed the area on September 10, devastating entire neighborhoods and sweeping thousands of people into the sea.

Meanwhile, Authorities in eastern Libya announced that six Libyan National Army (LNA) troops were killed, and eight others were wounded in an attempt to foil a “foreign-backed plot” to destabilize the city of Benghazi.

Libyan media reported that the LNA was clashing with an armed group affiliated with Mahdi al-Barghathi, who once led a brigade fighting alongside Khalifa Haftar's LNA forces before joining a Tripoli government that Haftar did not recognize.

The health minister from Libya's eastern government, Othman Abduljalil, said in a press conference on Friday that 15 people were killed during the clashes, including six LNA members and nine terrorist militants. He explained that the clashes erupted in the Salmani neighborhood between LNA members and militants of former Defense Minister Al-Mahdi Al-Barghathi.

Later, the Libyan Military Prosecutor in the eastern region, Faraj Al-Sosae, said that Al-Barghathi was seriously injured during the clashes.

“A convoy of 40 armed militants accompanying Al-Barghathi had infiltrated to Benghazi,” he said, adding that when a police unit was sent to arrest the former Defense Minister, the unit was confronted by the militants accompanying Al-Barghathi.

 

 



US Military Says It Strikes Iran-Backed Militia Facility in Syria

A convoy of US military vehicles near Qamishli, Syria, February 2020. (SANA/via Reuters)
A convoy of US military vehicles near Qamishli, Syria, February 2020. (SANA/via Reuters)
TT

US Military Says It Strikes Iran-Backed Militia Facility in Syria

A convoy of US military vehicles near Qamishli, Syria, February 2020. (SANA/via Reuters)
A convoy of US military vehicles near Qamishli, Syria, February 2020. (SANA/via Reuters)

US forces conducted strikes in Syria against Iranian-aligned militia groups for a second day in a row Tuesday in response to further attacks on US personnel, US Central Command said late Tuesday.

In the latest retaliatory strikes, US forces hit a weapons storage and logistics facility after militia groups launched a rocket attack on US personnel at Patrol Base Shaddadi in Eastern Syria.

Earlier Tuesday, Pentagon press secretary Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder said that over the weekend the militias had also targeted US personnel with a drone attack and indirect fires at another base, Green Village, where US troops are operating — which prompted the US to strike nine militia targets on Monday in self-defense.

There are about 900 US troops deployed in Syria. No US troops were injured in either attack.