 [CITIZEN.CO.ZA] The airport serving the Libyan capital resumed flights on Saturday following a five-day suspension after deadly festivities around the facility that also damaged planes on the tarmac.
Lotfi Khalil, the director general of Mitiga airport on the eastern outskirts of Tripoli
...a confusing city, one end of which is located in Lebanon and the other end of which is the capital of Libya. Its chief distinction is being mentioned in the Marine Hymn...
, said services resumed with Buraq Air flying to the eastern city of Tobruk and Libyan Airlines leaving for Tunis.
One local carrier, state-owned Afriqiyah Airways, however, has yet to resume operations because its planes were damaged in Monday’s fighting in which at least 20 people were killed, he told AFP.
Since the closure, flights had been diverted to Misrata, a city 200 kilometres (120 miles) east of the capital.
Mitiga airport, a former military air base, was evacuated on Monday after gunnies attacked it in an attempt to free detainees at a jail there.
The health ministry of Libya’s UN-backed Government of National Accord (GNA) said 20 people were killed and 63 maimed in the violence.
The GNA condemned what it called a "premeditated" attack by button men trying to free "terrorists" belonging to the Islamic State
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not really Moslems....
jihadist group and al-Qaeda.
Mitiga has been a civilian airport since Tripoli’s main international airport was badly damaged in fighting between rival militias in mid-2014.
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