By Ashraf Abdul-Wahab.
Tripoli, 12 May 2104:
There was shooting incident last night outside Palm City, the upmarket beachside residential compound . . .[restrict]west of Tripoli, when a gang attacked the Diplomatic Police checkpoint there. One of the gang members was killed in the attack and a member of security wounded.
The incident is not seen as politically motivated either by residents and staff at Palm City or by the security forces, rather a case of criminals intent on robbery.
A spokesman for the Diplomatic Police told the Libya Herald that they started firing when the gang arrived in two vehicles and tried to force its way into the compound. They did not know who the member of the gang were. In the shooting, the gang’s vehicles were hit. It is thought that was when one of the members of the gang died. The others then managed to steal three Kalashnikovs and a vehicle from the Diplomatic Police and fled with it, abandoning one of their own vehicles and the dead man.
This morning armed gunmen, thought to be relatives of the dead man, returned in a white car with tinted windows and started firing at the checkpoint before again fleeing. One member of the security forces was wounded in the back.
According to the Diplomatic Police, the dead man has not been identified. However, Tripoli National Security Directorate told this paper that the dead man was a known criminal from Abu Sleem who had been one of the several thousand released from prison by the Qaddafi regime during the revolution.
This newspaper has also been told by security forces, though, that according to his ID card the dead man was from Zintan.
With input from Farah Waleed [/restrict]
