Benghazi, March 22: Unknown assailants threw a grenade . . .[restrict]at a car filled with ammunition in Derna late last night, casing a massive explosion. There were no reported casualties.
For the past three weeks, Derna has been relatively quiet with nothing untoward other than the announcement that Foot and Mouth Disease had spread to the surrounding area and that no live animals could be transported in or out of it. However, at the beginning of the month, on March 2, the head of the security committee in the town, Colonel Mohammed Al-Hassi, was shot and killed outside a petrol station in the town.
Al-Hassi, who had previously survived two earlier assassination attempts, was also the head of Derna’s anti-drugs unit and had cracked down hard on local drug smugglers during and before the revolution. He was also investigating the activities of two of the brigades at the time of his death.
It is not known if this latest incident is linked. However, Derna is on the smuggling route into Egypt.
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