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On May 18th, the Government of National Accord’s forces took control of al-Watiya airbase from Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar’s Libyan National Army (LNA).
Notably, a Russian-made Pantsir-S1 air defense system was captured, and was being moved towards Tripoli to be paraded as a war trophy.
It is potentially on its way to Turkey, after that.
Looks like the GNA is sparing no time getting the Pantsir-S1 out of al-Watiya, undoubtedly heading to Turkey. Since this is Libya the whole process has to be filmed of course. pic.twitter.com/IALtCfyL54
— Oryx (@oryxspioenkop) May 18, 2020
Pantsir close ups.
Was locked and loaded… pic.twitter.com/50TwPy1IjB— Oded Berkowitz (@Oded121351) May 18, 2020
#Libya– #GNA is not wasting any time, or risking potential airstrikes trying to destroy it, getting the captured Pantsir-S1/SA-22 Greyhound out of al-Watiyah Airbase pic.twitter.com/5X5hfUddde
— Oded Berkowitz (@Oded121351) May 18, 2020
#Libya– the Pantsir from al-Watiyah (maybe that’ll be the title of a movie one day…) reaching its temporary destination for celebrations in Martyrs’ Square, #Tripoli pic.twitter.com/9ZfHkGMpdQ
— Oded Berkowitz (@Oded121351) May 19, 2020
The LNA, however, hasn’t given up on Al-Watiya and the air force carried out strikes on GNA positions in and around the base, no casualties have been confirmed.
#قاعده_الوطيه تحت قصف طيران السلاح الجو الليبي .
— غصة الخوارج (@LiBya_73) May 18, 2020
صور من قاعدة الوطية الجوية تحت سيطرة قوات الجيش الليبي الباسلة #البركان_ينتصر pic.twitter.com/jv4uHPXd5M
— عماد فتحي E.Fathi (@emad_badish) May 18, 2020
The LNA also said that the GNA hadn’t been able to obtain any weaponry from al-Watiya, but the videos and photographs of the Pantsir-S1 prove otherwise.
#ليبيا — الجيش: سحب ألف آلية مدرّعة وكل الطائرات ومنظومات الدفاع الجوي من قاعدة الوطية
— ا لـ حـ ـد ث (@AlHadath) May 18, 2020
The LNA said that it had withdrawn 1,000 armored vehicles, as well as all defense systems and weapons.
2/2 Furthermore, one of the damaged vehicles probably towed to the entrance of a third shelter (probably after the attack). #GNA #LNA #Turkey pic.twitter.com/FtQw6PDmVq
— ImageSat Intl. (@ImageSatIntl) May 18, 2020
The Turkish Bayraktar TB2 drones continue flying above, as they carried out an attack on an Krasukha electronic warfare system south of Sirte.
Libya'da #UMH Hava Kuvvetleri, #Hafter milislerinin #BAE'den temin ettiği Rus menşeli Krasuhka Elektronik Harp Sistemi'ni imha etti. pic.twitter.com/01uvjzJ1TI
— Clash Report (@clashreport) May 18, 2020
Regarding the situation in Libya, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg held a discussion, and issued a statement saying that the Alliance’s position on the conflict was uniform.
On Libya, Stoltenberg reiterated NATO’s readiness to help the war-torn North African country by building its defense and security capacities. The Erdoğan-Stoltenberg conversation came on the same day the latter explicitly lent support to the GNA.
In an interview with Italian daily La Repubblica, Stoltenberg acknowledged the fact that there is an ongoing arms embargo on Libya, stressing:
“However, this doesn’t mean to put on the same level the forces led by [Khalifa] Haftar and the government of Fayez al-Sarraj, the only one recognized by the U.N.”
“For this reason, NATO is ready to give its support to the government of Tripoli,” he said.
“NATO is prepared to help Libya in the area of defense and security institution building, in response to the request by the Prime Minister of the Government of National Accord to assist the GNA to strengthen its security institutions,” he said.
“Any NATO assistance to Libya would take account of political and security conditions, and would be provided in full complementarity and in close coordination with other international efforts, including those of the UN and the EU. The Secretary General also recalled that all parties should respect the U.N. arms embargo, as reaffirmed at the Berlin International Conference on Libya in January this year, and that NATO fully supports U.N. efforts to find a political solution,” added the secretary-general.
Meanwhile, the countries that support the LNA, or simply are against Turkey’s spreading its influence in the Mediterranean issued statements prior to the progress in fighting.
Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Greece, France and Cyprus xpressed their regret over the escalation of violence in Libya, and considered that Turkey’s agreement with the GNA threatens regional stability.
A joint statement issued by the foreign ministers of Egypt, Greece, Cyprus, France and the UAE said that the latest worrying developments in the eastern Mediterranean were discussed, in addition to a number of regional crises that threaten peace and stability in that region.
Regardless of that, and following the current standstill in fighting and the GNA’s capturing of al-Watiya, Turkey used the chance to begin drilling in the Eastern Mediterranean.
State-run oil firm Turkish Petroleum has submitted an application to start drilling in parts of the eastern Mediterranean outlined in the country’s contentious maritime borders agreement with the Libyan government in Tripoli, Energy Minister Fatih Donmez said on May 14th.
In an interview with Anadolu Agency, Donmez said that Turkey’s gas an oil exploration plans will proceed as foreseen by the November 27, 2019 agreement, which seeks to create an exclusive economic zone from Turkey’s southern Mediterranean shore to Libya’s northeast coast.
Currently, the conflict is turning towards a fight for territory, which Turkey likely promised to assist in capturing from the LNA, in return for wider access to energy resources, despite any opposition from other states that show concern.
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The murder of Colonel Kaddafi and the destruction of Libya was part of a bigger NATO and EU plan to grab Libyan natural resources, Turkey, Canada and Italy were the prime architects of this blatant aggression. Turkey is playing even more insidious role by recruiting child Syrian refugees and sending them to their deaths in Libya while it plunders oil for NATO.
BS. France is also a main NATO partner.. They were the real architect of desctruction of Libya and now they support Haftar. So for whom they want to plunder Libyan oil now ? NATO again ?
None want to plunder Libya. You are still in old days country mode. The oilcompanies are the ones helping each other against each other and they already was there.
The problem now it to be legitime by some Goverment there. So far we have 2 and how legitime are they? I think none are.
I am as for Syria and several other countries being non working conglomerated for Libya is diveded in 2-3 sountries. The was Sultanated.
And I am for the income should be shared to each and every person, so corruption is avoid or at least kept down.
Sharing oil and gas never has an issue for the Baath Part owners. We see the same for Iraq. Shiits got Kirkuk and only has fighting ISIS and others as a pretended hobby.
Nonsense. It was the French and USA aircraft which bombed Libya to eternity. You may forgot the Hillary Clinton’s response, let me remind you; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mlz3-OzcExI She says “We came”.
Mr Hindu refuses to see that part of the reality. Because it does not fit his theory of ‘good guys supporting Haftar and Bad guys supporting Sarraj” Thats what happens when you base your theories on personal feelings, but not realities.
Atleast better than your profet who raped 6 yr old aisha.
https://gifimage.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/indian-head-bob-gif-2.gif
Stupid culture, i can put an indian head to my car. Works the same as headbob toys.
I laughed my ass on feb 27 when russia killed 50 of your soldiers :D
Do brits let you laugh on your own will slave ?
Come here indian boy , I will tie you at the barrels of cannons and fire just like Brits did. You will love it.
Guess it hurt it your feelings :D
We can see who is triggered , dont we ?
And when he does this move , he usually says ‘ I kom from bombey’
Hahahaha Dude, i just imagined the accent perfectly with that sentence. Damn. On that exact second, you understand from now on you are interacting with a baboon.
I dont care what a wahabi did 1500 years ago , sweetie.
But I do know that in todays india 7% of all Indian women marry before they reach the age of 14.
She came,she saw then she failed (period)
Yesm but several Nato countries took over after that. USA said it was Our business. It was and are, but I am not proud of the midmanegement there.
You really dont get that those oilcompanies already was there working for Gadaffy.
Turks are same thing. There is a minority of Turks there and Turks are fx relative big in building construction. Of course some maybee cheeper oild will be fine too.
But putting in Nato in like that just tell, You dont understand, that Gadaffy finally was enough is enough.
And where TOO: Mali, Niger, Tchad, upper Volta, Nigeria and even Sudan.
I do not think NATO will take sides here, despite what this article suggests. Obviously different NATO members support different sides, Turkey and Italy supports GNA, France and Greece supports LNA for variable reasons. Also NATO is out of scope for Libya, individual NATO members may have (diverging) interests, but NATO itself does not. The only NATO country that directly participates in this conflict is Turkey. The principal actor in the Libya theatre has not yet entered the scene. We shall see, what Egypt will do. It is in the powers of Egypt to decide the fate of this civil war.
You must be kidding, NATO destroyed Libya for oil plunder and killed Qaddafi and totally destabilized a tribal society. Italy was the main instigator for the bombing of Libya, the Turkeys are just opportunists and Johnny come lately. On one point you are right, unless the faggot Sisi intervenes in force, there will be a Mexican standoff between GNA and LNA, both are garbage anyway.
No, it was US, not NATO. I know it is difficult to discern the two at times, but destroying Libya was a US enterprise with some support from select Europaean NATO members, but not a NATO project itself.
Your knowledge level for so many things are so low and Youdeny to learn.
People like You are the main parts of the deep state and created by Yourself like here.
If darwin is right, You are born with no ears and a big mouth.
There are 28 member countries in NATO. You mentioned only four. The official NATO position has been declared. That means a majority agree with what the Secretary General said – including of course, the U.S. I hope Egypt does not get destabilized next. Sisi is also making the mistake of leaning towards Russia – something I don’t think America will turn a blind eye to. I liked Sisi for what he said regarding Syria. He stressed the need to support legitimate governments, and I think it was for that reason he overthrew Morsi. Morsi was supporting the war to overthrow Bashar Al-Assad.
But on Libya Sisi is wrong. He is now the one supporting a non-state actor against a legitimate government.
Russia is increasingly showing its imperialistic desires too. Russia hyped about being invited by the legitimate government of Syria. I am not against what Russia is doing in Syria. But in Libya, certainly the GNA did not invite Russia. So what are the Wagner groups doing there?
I think Wagner groups are paid by the UAE. It is mostly a business for them, probably little politics is involved. In additions, I think they are being withdrawn as part of a Erdogan/Putin deal, this is why GNA can progress easily nowadays. I do not know the exact Russian position on Libya, but I suspect it is highly opportunistic, as they do not have a major interest there. You may be right that Russia is getting more imperialistic, but at the moment I think this stays at tolerable levels, especially compared with US for example. My personal thought on Libya is that any side wins is fine for me, but a prolonged civil war perpetualized by external actors (mainly UAE vs. Qatar/Turkey) is the worst thing that can happen to Libyans, neighbouring Arab countries and the EU.
Sisi overthrew Morsi because the Egyptian people demanded it upon finding out he and his party are Muslim Brotherhood.
Libya is like wise, the Muslim Brotherhood against the elected government of Tubrok.
The UN recognizing the GNA does not make it legitimate.
Egypt has enough problems with the MB at home, it does not need them taking over Libya and waging war on their western border.
If the Egyptians wanted Sisi to overthrow Morsi because they liked Sisi, then why does the majority of Egyptians feel suppressed and live in fear of the current government? What Sisi is doing about silencing dissent isn’t good, but I still think Sisi is leading Egypt in a better direction than Morsi was. If Egypt had proceeded, as Morsi wanted, with support for Rebels in Syria, Egypt would probably have severed ties with Russia. And that will bring them totally in American control, and probably destabilize Egypt as well. I think this was the danger Sisi foresaw. Egypt had always tried to play Neutral between the West, Russia, China and other countries. Morsi would probably have changed that. Again, Morsi seemed to favor an overnight change in Egypt, which was counter-productive. He should have followed Erdogan’s example. Erdogan has been gradually strengthening Islam in Turkey by dramatically increasing the amount spent to establish and renovate Islamic Institutions across the country – particularly elementary schools. Such fundamental change is what Morsi should have pursued. They won’t bear fruit now, but will in the future. Erdogan himself is a product of Imam Hatip elementary school. Whatever you call them, Muslim Brotherhood, Salafists, Shiite Extremist, etc., it all points to one thing. The Muslim World has come awake and there is an increasing push to change the current status quo. This is increasing by the day. Last decade the challenge from the Muslim world wasn’t so great for the U.S. Today it is great, and tomorrow it’ll be greater.
Regarding the Libyan government, it is the recognized government by the U.N. Assad’s regime also claims legitimacy from the U.N. The U.N. is made of many countries – not just America.
If Egypt wants to try stopping the Islamic Awakening, it has every reason to give it a try, but that does not mean the Muslim world should listen to their complaint about the brotherhood.
I know very little about the brotherhood and don’t even know what they stand for. If you can please tell me more about the MB. It is possible their cause leads to no good.
A short but comprehensive history of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood. Salafist, yes the other side of the Wahhabi coin, both are Sunni.
https://www.fort-russ.com/2019/07/thierry-meyssan-the-arab-spring-and-its-muslim-brotherhood-assassins/
This will help in reducing muzlim population :D No matter who wins, muslims will keep on fighting each other and the rest of the non muslim world will live in peace :D Continue to fight each other :D Gooooodd
So you say world was a better place when 5-10.000 Christian British soldiers were slaiving 500 mio Hindu like you and tieng you in front of their canons if you did not obey them ?
Was the world more peacefull and you were more happy then ?
Indian soldiers destroyed ottoman empire so i guess you stupid sister raping turks should stfu
“I thought God was British until the Turks led by Mustafa Kemal defeated the British” Gandhi
Also all the low iq indians are either killed or taken prisoner on Kut fortress. Thanks to sub human indians, we defeated brits in every front which had indians with them.
Lol read your history u stupid turk. Indian soldiers killed u like dogs in the middle east.Arabs fucked u as well.Get ready to be destroyed this time again by the arabs as you stupid turks are isolated. :D
Nice language . Did you practice it while you were shitting in banks of Ganga river this morning ?
I confuse it, do they first drink and shit, or they shit and then drink ? Does it matter for da filthy indians ?
Last time I heard they were drining cow pizz and taking a bath in cow dung to avoid Corona. Such enlightened people.
My bet is even corona would avoid from those filhty hosts :D It probably would say; “To hell with this, i came to feed upon some protein, but the filth is unbearable” Lol
Hahah lol. Learn history better brit slave. You were just enslaved baboons for brits. They saw you as sub-human for centuries. We will help Pakistan to get their rightful land back someday. World is changing, except Indıa will be always someones slave.
You mean indian soldiers that were slaved by British and serving for British imperialism in ME while 5 million of your own people were dying from British induced hunger in Indian heartlands.
Here is yr indian pride , enjoy.
Yeah, but it will never compare to nearly 100 million Christians that died in WW1 and WW2. The whole Muslim population of Libya is less than 7 million. The deaths not up to 30,000 I believe. In a nutshell, all the Muslim deaths in the Middle East are not up to 5 million since the 1990s. Only 20% of the World’s Muslims live in the Middle East. and less than 1% of the Middle Eastern Muslims have died from your Crusader wars. Do not think the World Muslims are taking this lying down. There is a growing Islamic awakening of the Muslim world. That is why you see the U.S struggling to maintain control, and it’s losing. It’s remaining puppet governments are increasingly getting unstable (Saudi Arabia, U.A.E, etc.) both Qatar an Iraq are out of its fold now. The same thing goes for Turkey. Iran has trained militias all over the Middle East and has developed arms to purge the Americans from that region. Israel faces multi-front threats like never before, and does not have the military muscle to neutralize them. Russia has returned to the Middle East and China will soon have to join them.
What is happening today is certainly better for Islam than the Status Quo imposed by the West. We’ll see how it ends.
Wont happen kweer there more likely be a revolution to search seek and destroy facist poofs!
Turkeys are the cannon fodder of NATO but are cowards and using coerced child soldiers so that their EU masters can loot Libyan oil.
Turks may be cannon fodder for NATO. But they certainly aren’t cowards. Look what they did to Syrian soldiers with those drones even as Russia strongly warned them not to. They are deploying forces in Syria against a nuclear armed adversary. That is not the actions of a coward.
I can confirm that. So many hahas from people knowing nothing about the enemies. The Turkish drones at the lowers levels nw seemes to be very good ones.
Childsoldiers are very small and therefore can attack almost unseen.
We saw the same in WW2, where the Japaneze use Bonsai soldiers. Their versions were no succes. Some only had one arm. But small soldiers eat less …
Turkish backed terrorist cannot break the siege of Tripoli and only are active in western part of Libya near Tunis border….they have retake an isolated base and captured a Pantsir system which was hide there!…LNA control 90% of Libya and the oil resources…if Hafter has not yet take Tripoli is because some NATO countries fear a wave of refuges towards Mediterranean…
Italy was the prime instigator for the destruction of Libya for its OIL. Now it is a major cluster fuck and there is a prolonged Mexican stand off as unless there is a major Egyptian intervention, which I doubt as Egyptian military is totally corrupt and repressing its own people, that it can intervene. So Libya like Syria is in for a long period of conflict. Sadly there are no good guys in Libya.
You are dreaming. Bet me on this forum, it’s time up for Khalifa Haftar. Watch what unfolds after this NATO declaration. I think Haftar’s mistake was leaning towards Russia. Trump was undecided regarding which side to support. I bet Erdogan talked him into backing the GNA. Trust me, its time up for Haftar.
LNA are deployed at the gates of Tripoli and oil fields of Libya are under his control!…GNA only have 5% of Libya!…
GNA only control 5% of Libya and NO petrol field…indeed is time up for Haftar
Some LNA troops are already withdrawing from Tripoli front as we speak here. The logic is clear , if you can not get Tripoli with Watiya base unde your hand ,you can never get it when Watyiya is under the control of your enemy. So please quit dreaming.
Watiya is situate in western part!..nothing change LNA have Mitiga and Tripoli under artillery attacks!
That’s what NATO is : piracy, low level piracy. And I’m fill shamed beacause i’m paying my taxes to these dirty gangsters.
I love it. None probatly will blame You for going somewhere else.
U.S. is doing the same state funded piracy as once the British Empire.
Seems as though there is a lot of revisionism here. Italy instigated the destruction of Libya for oil? Gee, all this time I thought it was the Gold Dinar and Sarcozy’s taking money from Gaddafi that was the prime reasons. Then there is Haftar being targeted for destruction because he is leaning towards Russia? Does this mean all his CIA/Mossad connections (which he has had for many years) have dumped him? Now the reversal of fortunes of war is favoring GNA…with the possibility of NATO intervention guarantying continued conflict and chaos. Of course the Libyan oil will continue to flow to a delighted Europe. Who is winning? Anyone? Certainly not the Libyans. Why does all this seem familiar?
The position of the NATO Secretary General has indeed reached an absolute low point, it is surreal how ridiculous and undignified this office is.