Armed clashes shut down Tripoli airport

TRIPOLI: Armed clashes broke out in Libya’s capital Tripoli closing down the city’s main working airport, local residents and an official said on Sunday.
Tripoli has been mostly calm since the Libya Dawn force, an armed faction allied to the city of Misrata, took over the capital in the summer and set up its own government in rivalry to Prime Minister Abdullah Al-Thinni.
It was not immediately clear who was involved in Sunday’s fighting, and there was no confirmation from health authorities of any casualties.
A spokesman for the civil aviation authority said Mitiga airport had been closed because of the security situation. Mitiga has operated as the capital’s main airport since fighting in the summer damaged and shut Tripoli airport.
Thinni’s internationally-recognized government and the elected House of Representatives are holed up in the eastern city of Tobruk, and the two factions are now vying for control over Libya and its oil resources.
Meanwhile, an Italian engineer kidnapped in Libya in March has been freed and flew home overnight, the Foreign Ministry announced Sunday.
No details were released of how Gianluca Salviato, 48, came to be liberated days after another Italian, Marco Vallisa, 54, was freed after four months in the hands of abductors.
Libyan security sources told AFP that Vallisa had been freed following the payment of a ransom of around one million euros to the armed militia that had been holding him.
Salviato was abducted on March 22 in Tobruk, a town close to the Egyptian border where he was working for Italian construction company Enrico Ravanelli on a sewage project.