By Ali Salem.
Tripoli, 27 December 2014:
A car bomb exploded in the very early hours of this morning outside the diplomatic police . . .[restrict]headquarters in Tripoli’s Sidi Masri area. No one was hurt but there was damage to the building. Responsibility has since been claimed by the “Islamic State of Tripoli” which is supposedly the local presence of the Islamic State, otherwise known as Daesh.
According to Colonel Mabrouk Butaher, the head of the unit, the bomb, in a white BMW, was set off by remote control.
Some hours later, shortly after sunrise, it is reported there was also an attempt to assassinate a prominent lawyer and activist. Hussein Abdussalam Gunau is said to have been shot at after leaving dawn prayers at a central Tripoli mosque.
Daesh’s primary presence in Libya is in Derna which it effectively controls. However, a group pledging allegiance to Daesh in Tripoli was reported to have surfaced last month, although Libya Dawn subsequently denied the existence of any such organisation. Nonetheless it is widely believed that there is a branch in the capital even if it does not have many members. Moreover, the dividing line between Daesh and Ansar Al-Sharia, also thought to have a presence in Tripoli, is increasingly seen as fluid.
Why Daesh would want to target the Diplomatic Police is another question. It may have been that this was simply an easy target for an organisation intent on eradicating all organisation in the country in order to replace them with its “Caliphate”. [/restrict]
