Islamist militias openly challenged the legitimacy of Parliament after announcing their seizure of Tripoli airport, plunging libya’s rocky political transition into a fresh crisis on Sunday.
The militias, which the elected Parliament branded as “terrorists”, said the House had lost its legitimacy through its alleged complicity with a deadly air strike on the airport that they blamed on Egypt and the United Arab Emirates.
“The Emirates and Egypt are implicated in this cowardly aggression,” Mohammed Hadia, spokesman for the Fajr libya (libya Dawn) militia, said on Saturday.
Parliament, for its part, fired back at the militias which announced their seizure of Tripoli airport after a weeks-long battle against nationalist rivals for control of the strategic facility.
“The groups acting under the names of Fajr libya and Ansar al-Sharia are terrorist groups and outlaws that are rising up against the legitimate powers,” parliament charged in a statement.
The parliament, which sits in Tobruk, 1,600 kilometres east of the capital, said it was determined to deal with the challenge through the regular armed forces.
Fajr libya is a coalition of Islamist militias, mainly from Misrata, east of the capital, while Ansar al-Sharia, which Washington also brands a terrorist group, controls around 80 percent of the eastern city of Benghazi.