Libyans have gathered across the country to celebrate nine years since the start of a revolution that toppled former leader Muammar Gaddafi after 42 years in power.
But the celebrations are tempered by the fighting between the renegade military commander Khalifa Haftar who has embarked on an offensive to take the capital, Tripoli, where the United Nations-recognised Government of National Accord is based.
The rival governments are preparing to resume talks in Geneva to bring an end to the violence which has split the country.
Al Jazeera’s Charles Stratford reports from Misrata.
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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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