ZAWIYA, Libya — No official statement had explained what set off the mortar shell that killed at least eight people at a camp in this western Libyan city on Sunday evening, Xinhua reported. Eight others were injured in the Al-Harsha area, about 60 km west of Tripoli, the agency said, citing local media.
The camp is affiliated with the Security Threats Combatting Agency, local reports said, and Xinhua ties that agency to Mohammed Bahrun, widely known as “Al-Far,” and to the Interior Ministry of Libya’s Government of National Unity. As of writing, TEH found no statement on the blast from the United Nations Support Mission in Libya, which has warned about Zawiya since May.
Al-Ahrar TV, citing a medical source, said the dead and injured were taken to Sorman General Hospital. Hospitals in the city appealed for blood donations, and media sources said the toll could rise. Xinhua’s page carries a 07:01 timestamp on Monday, which TEH reads as Beijing time, or 23:01 GMT on Sunday.
The blast lands in a city where armed groups have clashed repeatedly this year. Xinhua reported at least five people killed in Zawiya fighting on May 8 and at least three on June 9, when it also noted the UN mission’s late-May warning of escalating tension and continued mobilisation of armed formations. The mission’s own statement on the May fighting said the situation in Zawiya “risks wider destabilization.”
The National reported in August that fighting between two militias from the area, both nominally affiliated to the government in Tripoli, had spread to infrastructure: six drone strikes in five days hit fuel tanks, a blending plant, a desalination plant and a substation, though no one was killed and no group claimed them. It put the forces of Mohamed Bahroun, whom TEH takes to be the man Xinhua spells Bahrun, on one side of the rivalry, and an ACLED representative called the strikes “unprecedented.”
The UN envoy, Hanna Serwaa Tetteh, told the Security Council on 14 October that attacks on infrastructure may constitute grounds for measures under Council resolutions, UNSMIL said, and the US delegate urged sanctions on anyone obstructing progress toward elections. Both remarks came in the debate over a stalled Libya election deal that TEH covered last Wednesday.
What remains unsaid is basic. Xinhua’s account rests on unnamed local reports and one television station, it says no official statement has been issued, and TEH found no second outlet from its trusted list carrying the toll. Whether the shell went off by accident or was fired is not established. Until someone with authority speaks, the clearest detail on record is a hospital appeal for blood donors.
