By Libya Herald reporters.
Tripoli/Misrata, 8 January 2016:
Amid rising anger across Libya at yesterday’s Zliten suicide attack, demonstrators in Misrata last night . . .[restrict]broke into the local bureau of Naaba TV, accusing it of sympathising with the so-called Islamic State and demanding that it close. They accused Naaba of refusing to recognise those killed as martyrs and of instead suggesting they were opponents of the 17 February revolution.
Staff at the bureau told the protestors that they themselves had resigned a few days earlier over what they said was Naaba’s bias in favour of Islamists and that no one was now working there.
Earlier, a Naaba TV crew was ordered out of the hospital in Zliten as they tried to interview some of the wounded. The Libya Herald has been told that when they then contacted the mayor of Zliten to try and get back in he told them to leave the town.
Back in Misrata, a crew from Tanasah TV were similarly ejected from the funeral ceremony during the afternoon for a number of the dead. It too is accused of sympathising with IS.
Naaba owned by Abdul Hakim Belhaj while Tanasah belongs to Sadek Al-Ghariani, still accepted by the Tripoli regime as the country’s grand mufti.
Calls for both stations to close were also heard today in protests over the Zliten attack in Tripoli’s Algeria Square.
There is still no official figure on the number of those killed in yesterday’s attack. A doctor in Zliten said that death certificates had been issued by the local hospital for 45 of the victims and that there were another 15 bags of body parts as yet unidentified. Another four bodies were in the hospital in Misrata. However, according to the health ministry in Tripoli, which said it has collated the information from hospitals there as well as in Khoms, Zliten and Misrata, 81 people died in the attack. [/restrict]
