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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)
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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.

 

 

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Israeli Airstrikes Hit Yemen's Capital and Port City after Houthi Attack Targets Israel

A Houthi supporter carries a mock missile during an anti-US and anti-Israel protest in Sana'a, Yemen, 13 December 2024. EPA/YAHYA ARHAB
A Houthi supporter carries a mock missile during an anti-US and anti-Israel protest in Sana'a, Yemen, 13 December 2024. EPA/YAHYA ARHAB
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Israeli Airstrikes Hit Yemen's Capital and Port City after Houthi Attack Targets Israel

A Houthi supporter carries a mock missile during an anti-US and anti-Israel protest in Sana'a, Yemen, 13 December 2024. EPA/YAHYA ARHAB
A Houthi supporter carries a mock missile during an anti-US and anti-Israel protest in Sana'a, Yemen, 13 December 2024. EPA/YAHYA ARHAB

A series of intense Israeli airstrikes shook Yemen's Houthi-held capital and a port city early Thursday and killed at least nine people, officials said, shortly after a Houthi missile targeted central Israel.
Thursday’s strikes risk further escalating conflict with the Iranian-backed Houthis, whose attacks on the Red Sea corridor have drastically impacted global shipping. The militants have so far avoided the same level of intense military strikes that have targeted the Palestinian Hamas militant group and Lebanon’s Hezbollah, fellow members of Tehran’s self-described “Axis of Resistance.”
The Houthi-controlled satellite channel al-Masirah said that some of the strikes targeted power stations in the capital, as well as the Ras Isa oil terminal on the Red Sea. The channel, citing its correspondent in the port city of Hodeidah, said at least seven people had been killed at the nearby port of Salif, while another two had been killed at the Ras Isa oil terminal.
Others suffered wounds at the Hodeidah port as well, it said.
An Israeli military statement offered no specifics on the targets hit, nor any damage assessment.
“The targets struck by the (Israeli military) were used by the Houthi forces for military purposes,” the statement said. “The strikes degrade the Houthi terrorist regime, preventing it from exploiting the targets for military and terrorist purposes, including the smuggling of Iranian weapons to the region.”
Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, an Israeli military spokesman, said the strikes hit energy and port infrastructure, which he alleged the militants “have been using in ways that effectively contributed to their military action.”
“Israel will not hesitate to act in order to defend itself and its citizens from the Houthi attacks,” Hagari said.
Houthi-held Hodeidah, some 145 kilometers (90 miles) southwest of Sanaa, has been key for food shipments into Yemen as its decades long war has gone on. There's also longstanding suspicion that weapons from Iran have been transferred through the port.
The strikes happened just after the Israeli military said its air force intercepted a missile launched from Yemen before it entered the country’s territory.
“Rocket and missile sirens were sounded following the possibility of falling debris from the interception,” the Israeli military said. Sirens sounded near Tel Aviv and the surrounding areas, and a large explosion was heard overhead at the time. The Houthis did not immediately claim the missile attack, but said an important military statement would be issued in the coming hours, following a pattern of how they claim their assaults.
Israel previously struck Hodeidah and its oil infrastructure in July after a Houthi drone attack killed one person and wounded 10 in Tel Aviv. In September, Israel struck Hodeidah again, killing at least four people after a militant missile targeted Israel’s Ben Gurion airport as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was arriving back to the country.
American forces have also launched a series of strikes on the Houthis over nearly a year due to Houthi attacks on shipping in the Red Sea corridor. On Monday, the US military's Central Command said it hit “a key command-and-control facility" operated by the Houthis in Sanaa, later identified as the al-Ardi complex once home to the government's Defense Ministry.
But Israel appears to have carried out Thursday's strikes alone. A US military official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the attacks, said America had no part in them.
The Houthis have targeted some 100 merchant vessels with missiles and drones since the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip started in October 2023 after Hamas' surprise attack on Israel that killed 1,200 people and saw 250 others taken hostage. Israel's grinding offensive in Gaza has killed over 45,000 Palestinians, local health officials say.
The Houthis have seized one vessel and sunk two in a campaign that has also killed four sailors. Other missiles and drones have either been intercepted by separate US- and European-led coalitions in the Red Sea or failed to reach their targets, which have also included Western military vessels.
The Houthis maintain that they target ships linked to Israel, the US or the United Kingdom to force an end to Israel’s campaign against Hamas in Gaza. However, many of the ships attacked have little or no connection to the conflict, including some bound for Iran.