Security sources said on Sunday that the Libyan-Egyptian border crossing is back to normal following its closure on Friday by local . . .[restrict]militiamen.
Colonel Abdul Salam Amin from the Directorate of Security at Musaid said the militiamen had handed it over to the undersecretary of the Ministry of the Interior in eastern Libya.
The handover and reopening followed a meeting between leading Interior Ministry officials and the militiamen.
The local militiamen closed the border claiming that there was “a lack of seriousness in the Ministries of Interior and Defense to protect the security of Libya”. They also claimed that too many goods were being smuggled across it unchallenged. They further alleged human trafficking by “a mafia of the Egyptians and Libyans” which they said also included the Libyan military. They also said that it should be handled by the state and not by locals.
At the time, however, an Interior Ministry official was reported to have claimed that it was that the ministry had closed the border following attacks on people crossing into Egypt.
On Saturday, a Libyan security official attributed the closure to the extreme shortage of basic requirements needed to carry-out duties at the crossing. Colonel, Abdul-Salam Alamin, an officer at the border’s security office, said the inability of the Ministry of Interior to control the crossing was due to the enormous numbers of passengers compared with the number of staff assigned to deal with them. The border crossing handling office was not adequate for the task, nor were the quarantine divisions nor the food and medicine control.
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