The 444th Combat Battalion announced yesterday that one of its detachments distributed more than 250,000 litres of fuel seized from smugglers in the middle of the desert free of charge to citizens travelling to the cities of the south.
Background
It will be recalled that the 444th had announced in July that it had ‘‘completely closed all smuggling routes and cut them off in positions spread over hundreds of kilometres in the middle of the Libyan desert’’.
The 444th Combat Brigade is the nearest thing the Tripoli based post Qaddafi Libyan government has to an army. It is not a militia group led by a warlord. It has had several turf wars with other Tripoli militias who see it as an existential threat.
This 444th claimed that the closing-off of all the smuggling routes ‘‘has led to the cessation of the smuggling of people, fuel and drugs from south to north and from north to south, in defence of the assets of the Libyan people and to preserve the livelihood of all Libyans’’.
Availability of fuel in the south?
It said it is pleased to announce to inhabitants of southern Libya that fuel is available daily at all designated stations. The lists of stations that will be supplied daily with fuel will be published on the Brega Company page, it had added.
Similarly, in July this year, the Tripoli based Libyan government launched an e-system to prevent fuel smuggling.
