TRIPOLI // A suicide attack in northwest Libya on Sunday claimed by ISIL killed five members of the Libya Dawn militia alliance that controls Tripoli.
“A car suicide bomber blew himself up near a checkpoint at an entrance of Dafniya” between the town of Zliten and Libya’s third city Misrata, said a spokesman for Libya Dawn.
The pre-dawn attack also wounded seven others, he added.
The Lana news agency of the militia-backed Tripoli administration confirmed the death toll.
ISIL claimed responsibility for the attack in a tweet, identifying the suicide bomber as a Tunisian named Abu Wahib Al Tunsi.
The group also used a Twitter account to warn Libya Dawn it was going to war with it “in order to cleanse the land of their filth”.
ISIL militants have carried out several attacks in the Misrata area as well as other parts of Libya, exploiting a security vacuum as two rival governments battle for control of the oil-producing nation.
Misrata, located to the east of Tripoli, is allied with the unofficial government that controls Tripoli. The internationally recognised government operates out of east Libya since losing control of the capital last August.
“We will support all army, police and revolutionary forces to fight and chase those apostates who have come to Libya claiming they are representing Islam,” Libya’s rival prime minister, Khalifa Ghwell, said at the scene of the blast.
“Islam disowns them.”
Libya plunged into chaos after the 2011 Nato-backed uprising that toppled and killed long-time dictator Muammar Qaddafi, with battle-hardened former rebels armed with heavy weapons carving out their own fiefdoms.
Libya Dawn, a coalition of militias seized power in Tripoli last year.
It installed a new government and parliament in the capital, prompting the administration recognised by the international community to flee to the east of the country.
Sunday’s attack comes three days after ISIL seized control of the airport in Sirte, another city east of Tripoli that has been the scene of months of sporadic fighting between the extremists and Libya Dawn.
The United Nations has for months struggled to broker a deal between warring parties through the creation of a national unity government.
On Saturday, a UN-sponsored meeting in neighbouring Tunisia of Libyan mayors and municipal representatives ended with a declaration calling for the “swift formation of a government of national accord”.
Meanwhile, Libya Dawn released dozens of Tunisians held in Libya were released on Saturday, the foreign ministry announced.
“All the Tunisians being held in Libya have been freed. The final group was released today,” the ministry said, without giving numbers.
In Tripoli, Mohamed Abdelsalam Al Kuwiri, who heads a unit in the Tripoli-based government that combats illegal migration, said that a final group of 90 Tunisians was released on Saturday – two days after 71 others were freed.
Tunis announced earlier in May that scores of its nationals were being held in western Libya by a militia belonging to the Libya Dawn alliance.
* Agence France-Presse