Shells kill seven in Libya as Haftar’s siege intesifies

Shells slammed into a densely-populated district of Tripoli overnight, piling misery on civilians from a two-week assault by commander Khalifa Haftar’s forces to take Libya’s capital from an internationally-backed government.

About 10 GRAD rockets hit the southern residential area of Abu Salim just before midnight on Tuesday, witnesses and authorities said, killing at least seven people, mainly women, and wounding 17. Some of them lost limbs.

Reuters said both sides blamed each other for the attack, the most intense yet on a residential area. Abu Salim is near the main point of entry into the city of about 2.5 million people.

Retired public servant Hadia al-Hariri was sleeping next to his wife when a shell hit the dining room of their two-storey house in Abu Salim, wounding her and their three-year-old son in the head. He rushed his other five children to a relative.

“We’ve heard gunfire every night, but now I’m really afraid,” Hariri said as neighbors consoled him in a narrow street where remains of a GRAD could be seen by his front door.

“This war can go on for months, I don’t know what to do next,” he said, clearing debris from burned shelves and shattered window glasses in the dining room with a gaping hole in the front wall.

ALSO READ: Suicide blast kills three policemen in Egypt

Haftar and his eastern Libyan forces have cast their advance as part of a campaign to restore order and defeat jihadists in a nation gripped by anarchy since the 2011 overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi.

But the internationally-recognized Tripoli government of Prime Minister Fayez al-Serraj which has kept him at bay in the southern suburbs – views the 75-year-old general as a dangerous would-be dictator in the Gaffafi mold.

The United Nations says thousands of civilians are trapped in southern districts of Tripoli due to the fighting. Rescuers and aid workers are struggling to reach them and electricity, water supplies and telecommunications have been badly disrupted.