Libya’s United Nations-recognised government has withdrawn from talks to bring about a permanent ceasefire after renegade military commander Khalifa Haftar’s forces struck the main port in Tripoli.
Haftar’s Libyan National Army launched a military offensive in April last year to take Tripoli, where the rival leadership of the Government of National Accord is based.
A steady flow of arms to Libya is feeding the conflict.
At January talks in Berlin world leaders had promised to stick to a UN arms embargo, but an Italian court says a ship with a Lebanese flag is being investigated for arms trafficking to Libya.
Al Jazeera’s Mahmoud Abdelwahed reports.
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In This Story: Libya
Libya, officially the State of Libya, is a country in the Maghreb region in North Africa, bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to the north, Egypt to the east, Sudan to the southeast, Chad to the south, Niger to the southwest, Algeria to the west, and Tunisia to the northwest.
The sovereign state is made of three historical regions: Tripolitania, Fezzan and Cyrenaica. The largest city and capital, Tripoli, is located in western Libya and contains over three million of Libya’s seven million people. The second-largest city is Benghazi, which is located in eastern Libya.
Libya became independent as a kingdom in 1951. A military coup in 1969 overthrew King Idris I. Parts of Libya are currently split between rival Tobruk and Tripoli-based governments, as well as various tribal and Islamist militias.
Libya is a member of the United Nations (since 1955), the Non-Aligned Movement, the Arab League, the OIC and OPEC. The country’s official religion is Islam, with 96.6% of the Libyan population being Sunni Muslims.
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