By Noora Ibrahim.
Benghazi, 21 August 2014:
Information circulating on social media claiming that students at Benghazi University will retake . . .[restrict]their previous year’s study is false, the University has said.
Benghazi University spokesman Mohamed Lanifi told the Libya Herald that the university had received hundred of calls from worried students after a statement appeared on the internet saying that students had to redo their last year’s classes, disrupted by violence,
Lanifi dismissed, out of hand, the claims that students in the faculties of medicine and law would go back to study their previous year of classes and that students from other departments would re-do the last semester. He said any information not passed on though official university channels could not be trusted.
Lanifi said in the current circumstances it was impossible to say when the university would reopen.
Benghazi University was set to reopen at the beginning of this month after an agreement between its Student’s Union and administration. However, a surge in violence in the city at the end of Ramadan forced it to remain closed.
Five days ago Benghazi University rejected an offer by the city’s council of revolutionaries, an umbrella organisation linking Ansar Al-Sharia, 17 February Brigade and other allied groups and individuals , to provide security at its campus in the Garyounis area in the south of the city.
Operation Dignity spokesman Mohamed Hejezi told this paper that at the present time the area should be considered a war zone and that Dignity forces would not be held responsible for the safety of students who returned to the university for study.
The situation has been worst for those students staying in accommodation in Garyounis, close to the sprawling 17 February Brigade camp which has been the focus of several Operation Dignity manoeuvres.
At the end of May, Operation Dignity forces warned students at the university not to attend classes, saying the campus was being used by Islamists to store weapons and ammunition.
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