By Libya Herald reporters.
Benghazi, 23 February 2017:
Three more soldiers and at least two terrorists died today in heavy fighting as the Libyan National Army still sought to overrun the last militant position in Benghazi’s Ganfouda district.
One of the terrorists appears to have been Syrian. A video posted by an LNA soldier shows this man yelling defiantly at troops and swearing he will blow them all up. The man’s accent has been identified as Syrian. The footage later shows the body of the same man alongside another dead terrorist. It has not been said how the soldiers died though as usual the terrorists have been leaving booby traps as they retreat.
An army source said that the LNA now controls seven of the 12 apartment blocks. In one of the buildings troops discovered and defused three car bombs primed and ready to be used. It seems probable that the rubble which now surrounds the apartments made it impossible to drive the vehicles out.
The LNA said that it is still concerned that there are civilians with the terrorists. It is said that these civilians are being used as human shields. However in Sirte some at least of the women and children who crossed into Bunyan Marsous lines in the final days had, until that moment, chosen to stay with the terrorists. And indeed one of the women blew herself up when she was about to be searched.
The LNA announced today that eight bodies have been found buried in a makeshift grave in one of the buildings. A further 36 corpses have been uncovered in a multiple burials in Ganfouda. Red Crescent workers have been helping soldiers exhume and remove the remains. Forensic samples are being taken from each of the dead in the hope that they can be used to identify them.
Meanwhile the authorities in Ajdabiya have arrested a local man suspected of running a terrorist safe house at his farm. Two days ago a senior terrorist commander, Jassem Al-Kikli, nicknamed “Gasura” (the lion) was arrested near the town in circumstances that are still unclear.
It is known that Kikli fled Ganfouda in a vehicle before the LNA surrounded the terrorists. The man detained today was named as Abdulrahman Al-Tira who it is claimed was preparing to smuggle Kikli to Tripoli.
