In order to express their outrage at the worsening living conditions and the protracted political impasse, protesters stormed the Libyan parliament in the eastern city of Tobruk on Saturday and set portions of it on fire.
Local media stated that after one protester broke through the compound’s entrance with a bulldozer and others attacked the walls with construction tools, black smoke billowed as men burned tyres and torched cars.
Since an east-west split in 2014, which came three years after a widespread popular revolt overthrew dictator Moamer Kadhafi, the House of Representatives of Libya has been based in Tobruk, more than 1,000 kilometres (600 miles) east of the capital Tripoli.
A separate legislature, formally known as the High Council of State, is based in Tripoli as the oil-rich North African country remains divided between rival administrations vying for control.
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Libya, sweltering in summer heat, has endured days of power cuts — a situation worsened by the blockade of key oil facilities amid the entrenched political rivalries.
‘We want the lights to work,’ chanted protesters, some of whom were brandishing the green flags of the Kadhafi regime.
The parliament condemned the ‘acts of vandalism and the burning’ of its headquarters.
The interim prime minister of the Tripoli-based government, Abdulhamid Dbeibah, meanwhile voiced support for the protesters’ concerns in a Twitter message.
The two governments have been vying for power in Libya for months: the one based in Tripoli, led by Dbeibah, and another headed by former interior minister Fathi Bashagha, appointed by the parliament and supported by eastern-based strongman Khalifa Haftar.
Presidential and parliamentary elections, originally set for last December, were meant to cap a UN-led peace process following the end of the last major round of violence in 2020.
But the vote was never held due to several contentious candidacies and deep disagreements over the polls’ legal basis between the rival power centres.
The United Nations said Thursday that talks between the rival Libyan institutions aimed at breaking the deadlock had failed to resolve key differences.
Parliament speaker Aguila Saleh and High Council of State president Khaled al-Mishri met at the UN in Geneva for three days of talks to discuss a draft constitutional framework for elections.
While some progress was made, it was not enough to move forward towards elections, with the two sides still at odds over who could stand in a presidential vote, said the UN’s top Libya envoy Stephanie Williams.