By Ahmed Elumami.
Tripoli, 23 January 2014:
Local and Foreign media should visit Warshefana, the town’s local council has said, and see firsthand . . .[restrict]what it described as “a massacre.”
Clashes between local armed gangs and government security forces have so far left nine people dead and at least 20 injured in the town.
“I call on all foreign, Arabic and local media agencies to visit Warshefana in order to witness the massacre that the town is facing,” Spokesman for the Warshefana Shura Council, Abuejila Saif Annaser, told the Libya Herald today.
Warshafana was still experiencing clashes with “armed groups” claiming they had been commissioned to arrest criminals who used the town as a refuge, he said. The council, however, was told by the Prime Minister Ali Zeidan and the Ministries of Defence and Interior that “there was no commission to any force to go to Warshefana,” he added.
Saif Annaser said that many civilian homes in Warshefana’s districts of Al-Sahla, Sayad, Awlad Issa and Al-Hashan had been set alight and looted, and that local people were being terrorised by attacks with heavy weaponry. He also pointed out that criminals and criminal gangs were to be found all over Libya, not just in Warshefana. [/restrict]