The armed forces loyal to Marshal Khalifa Haftar carried out an operation on Tuesday against a Chadian opposition group in southern Libya bordering Chad, according to a media close to the strongman in eastern Libya.
"A vast operation"
was carried out by the special forces of the Tarek ben Ziyad battalion, one of the units of the forces loyal to Marshal Haftar,
"against the mercenaries and elements of the Chadian opposition present on Libyan territory"
, he added. indicated the television channel Libya al-Hadath, media arm of Marshal Haftar.
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"Their positions were targeted at Tarbou on the southern border
,
"
Libya al-Hadath added in a statement. The Tarek Ben Ziyad battalion, which mourned one death, said its units had
"destroyed several armored vehicles and eliminated those inside"
, before
"chasing those who fled to the border".
Several Chadian rebel groups are based in Libya, Sudan or in border areas with these countries, including the Front pour l'alternance et la concorde au Tchad (Fact), which launched an offensive on April 11 on N 'Djamena which led to the death of President Idriss Déby Itno, in power for 30 years. For its part, the Fact said in a statement that one of its positions had been attacked by
"the so-called Tarek ben Ziyad brigade, supported by Sudanese auxiliaries and supervised by officers of the French army from the Barkhane mission. ".
The group specifies that the fighting took place
"on Chadian territory".
Libya is trying to extricate itself from a decade of conflict since the fall in 2011 of the regime of Muammar Gaddafi, a chaos marked by the existence of rival powers, by bloody violence and by the presence of militias, foreign fighters and jihadist groups.