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By Libya Herald staff.
27 October, 2014.
The only international military help that Operation Dignity has been receiving is ammunition from Egypt, a fighter . . .[restrict]from Khalifa Hafter’s forces has claimed.
“No foreign country really supports us,” the Operation Dignity fighter told the Libya Herald. “But we have been getting a lot of ammunition from Egypt.” He said he knew the ammunition, including grad rockets, and a range of bullets, from 14.5 to 12.5 mm, was being supplied by Egypt because the country’s name was written on the boxes. Several times he had been to the border crossing with Egypt, as well as to Operation Dignity bases to collect large shipments of ammunition to take back to the front lines, he said.
The soldier added that rumours that foreign powers have been behind some of the airstrikes carried out the eastern city were baseless. “I am 100-percent sure that the pilots and planes doing the airstrikes in Benghazi are Libyan,” he said. “Some of the planes are very old but I have seen them being fixed so they are able to do these bombings.” He added that he believed most of these were Soviet-era aircraft.
The soldier said that in the five months he had been fighting in the front lines with Operation Dignity in Benghazi, he had seen nothing to suggest the involvement of other countries beyond the ammunition.
Months of sporadic airstrikes carried out under Operation Dignity weakened Islamist-affiliated militias in Benghazi, a strategy that appears to have paved the way for current on-the-ground moves to reclaim the city and bring it back under the control of the Libyan National Army. [/restrict]
