TRIPOLI: Authorities in western Libya’s city of Zawiya, which houses a major oil terminal and a large refinery, said on Friday they had launched a “large-scale operation” against criminal groups, as clashes and explosions were heard.
Security forces and military units carried out raids and arrests from dawn across the city west of the capital, Tripoli, just 45 km away, an official statement said.
The operation went after “criminal hideouts and wanted individuals” who were “involved in serious acts,” the authorities said, citing “murder and attempted murder, kidnapping and extortion, drug, arms and human trafficking, and illegal migration.”
Videos circulating on social media, which AFP could not independently verify, appeared to show armed clashes in residential neighborhoods and near the refinery complex — one of Libya’s most important — on the city’s western outskirts.
A Zawiya resident reached by phone by AFP said “the first clashes began in the early hours of Friday,” adding that they heard “explosions across the city.”
Local emergency services urged residents to remain indoors while midday Friday prayers — when large numbers of worshippers go to mosques — were set to take place.
The city of some 250,000 people has experienced repeated fights between armed groups.
In addition to housing important oil infrastructure, Zawiya has been notorious for smuggling networks involved in fuel and other smuggling across the nearby Tunisian border.
It is also a key departure point for irregular migrants seeking to reach Europe by crossing the Mediterranean.
Libya is still plagued by division and instability after years of unrest following the uprising that toppled longtime leader Muammar Qaddafi in 2011.
Libya’s largest functioning oil refinery has been closed, and an emergency has been declared after clashes erupted near the facility in Zawiya, two engineers and the refinery’s operator said.
Operator Azzawiya Oil Refining Company said in a statement it was forced to shut the plant completely and evacuate all tankers from the port after heavy shelling linked to the clashes struck multiple locations inside the facility.
Libya’s National Oil Corporation said in a statement that several heavy-caliber projectiles landed in various parts of the oil complex, but there had been no significant damage so far.
Clashes had intensified and spread into the residential area adjacent to the refinery, increasing risks to the facility and surrounding areas, NOC added.
NOC said the refinery had been shut and all tankers had been evacuated from the port as a precautionary measure, and that fuel supplies to Tripoli and surrounding areas had not been affected.
There was no immediate indication of who was involved in the violence or what caused it, although the city’s security directorate said it was a “security operation against outlaws.”
