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By Libya Herald reporter.
Tripoli, 19 December 2016:
Zawia’s Combined Cycle Gas Turbine (CCGT) power station was attacked last night by an armed group and staff forced to disconnect power lines to Tripoli and its suburbs.
At a press conference today, a GECOL official said that as a result of the attack, output at both the station’s units had been reduced, drastically cutting the power supply.
Insisting that the company was not on any one group’s side, he warned that any further attacks could result in the complete disruption of power supplies to the capital. Power station staff were increasingly frightened and might stop working altogether.
Questions are now being asked as to whether the attack was by criminals intent on some sort of financial gain or by a politically-driven unit intent on destabilising the capital 50 kilometres to the east by reducing the power supply and thus making the exhausted and dispirited population all more willing to accept a change of regime.
Forces linked to the Libyan National Army led by Field Marshal Khalifa Hafter, mainly Zintani and Wirshefani, have been closing in on Zawia in recent days, and Hafter has called on officers and soldier to be ready for an offensive against the capital.
