By Ahmed Elumami.
Benghazi, 5 October 2013:
A retired senior police officer was murdered by gunmen outside a Benghazi cafe this afternoon.
Abulhal Ali . . .[restrict]Mahdawi, who was 57, was shot as he stood outside a cafe in the city’s Al-Hadyaq district. He had apparently stopped there for coffee on his way to pick up his daughter from University.
The spokesman for Benghazi Joint Security Room, Abudllah Zaidi, confirmed to the Libya Herald that Mahdawi died instantly of gunshot wounds. He added that the killers had escaped.
The attack happened at a quiet time of day, when many people are collecting their children from school, and no witnesses have come forward.
An employee from Benghazi Medical Centre morgue, where Mahdawi’s body was taken, told local media that he had been shot at close range and from several different directions, suggesting that there was more than one attacker.
Today’s assassination is the latest in a string of killings targeting former and current military and security personnel in the east of the country. A week ago, three security officials were murdered in one day in Benghazi.
Associate Director of Intelligence in the eastern region, Colonel Abdulkadir Mohamed Ahmed Al-Madani, was shot seven times in an attack that also wounded one of his sons on 29 September. On the same day helicopter pilot Ali Adam Aldgara and a member of the Preventive Security Service, Najib Belhassan Al-Zway, were killed in separate car-bomb attacks. [/restrict]
