Recent fighting in southern Tripoli in Libya has killed 187 people and wounded 1,157, a spokesman for the ministry of health confirmed.
Tarek al-Hamshiri, the head of the government forces’ Field Medical Centre said that the government had transferred a number of wounded to Tunisia, Turkey, Italy and Ukraine for medical treatment.
This is now the fifth week since an offensive was launched by eastern Libya-based military commander Khalifa Haftar to take control of Tripoli.
The U.N.-backed government of national accord (GNA) in Tripoli issued a statement earlier on Saturday recognizing 710 fighters killed in Libya’s civil war in 2014 as “martyrs”, in a move a Tripoli government source said was aimed at winning the backing of forces in nearby Zintan in the fight against Haftar.
“The GNA took this step in a bid to get support from the mountain town of Zintan to strengthen its forces in confronting the eastern forces deployed by military commander Khalifa Haftar,” the government source said.
Libya has been suffering escalating violence and political division ever since the fall of the late leader Muammar Gaddafi’s regime in 2011.
