Protesters stormed Libya’s parliament in the eastern city of Tobruk and set fire to parts of it, venting their anger at deteriorating living conditions and months of political stalemate.
Black smoke billowed as men burned tires and torched cars during the incident on Friday, after a protester smashed the compound’s gate with a bulldozer and others attacked the walls with construction tools, local media reported.
The building was empty, as Friday is Saturday and Sunday in Libya.
Libya’s House of Representatives is based in Tobruk, more than 600 miles (1,000 km) east of the capital Tripoli, following the 2014 east-west split that came three years after a popular revolution ousted dictator Muammar Gaddafi.
A separate legislature, officially known as the Supreme Council of State, is based in Tripoli as the oil-rich North African country remains divided between rival administrations vying for control.
Libya, sweltering in the summer heat, has suffered days of power outages, a situation worsened by the blockade of key oil facilities amid entrenched political rivalries.
“We want the lights to work,” chanted protesters, some waving green flags of Gaddafi’s regime.
Parliament condemned the “acts of vandalism and arson” of its headquarters.
The interim prime minister of the Tripoli-based government, Abdul Hamid Dbeiba, meanwhile, expressed support for the protesters’ concerns in a message on Twitter.
The two governments have been battling for power in Libya for months: one based in Tripoli led by Dbeiba and the other headed by former interior minister Fathi Bashaga, who was appointed by parliament and is backed by eastern-based warlord Khalifa Haftar.
Presidential and parliamentary elections, originally scheduled for last December, were supposed to end the UN-led peace process after the last major round of violence ended in 2020.
However, the vote never took place due to several controversial candidates and deep disagreements over the legal basis of the elections between the rival centers of power.
The United Nations said on Thursday that talks between rival Libyan institutions aimed at breaking the deadlock had failed to resolve key differences.
Parliament Speaker Agila Saleh and Supreme Council of State President Khaled al-Mishri met at the United Nations in Geneva for three days of talks to discuss a draft constitutional framework for elections.
While some progress has been made, it has not been enough to move forward to elections, with the two sides still at loggerheads over who can run for president, the UN’s top envoy for Libya, Stephanie Williams, said.
On Saturday, Williams condemned the storming of the headquarters: “People’s right to protest peacefully must be respected and protected, but riots and acts of vandalism like the storming of the House of Representatives headquarters late yesterday in Tobruk are completely unacceptable.”
The prospect of elections looks as remote as ever since parliament appointed Bashaga on the grounds that Dbeiba’s term had expired.
After Bashagha failed to enter Tripoli in May, his rival administration took over further east in Sirte, Gaddafi’s coastal hometown.
There have been repeated clashes between armed groups in Tripoli, prompting fears of a return to full-scale conflict.
Demonstrators gathered in other cities on Friday, including Tripoli, where protesters held crossed-out images of Dbeiba and Bashagha.
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“Popular protests erupted in Libya in exasperation at the collapsing quality of life, the entire political class that produced it, and the UN that pandered to them for promised change,” Tarek Megerisi of the European Council on Foreign Relations wrote on Twitter.
“Things are escalating quickly and the answer will define the summer of Libya.”
On Thursday, Libya’s National Oil Corporation (NOC) announced losses of more than $3.5bn (£2.9bn) from shutdowns and declared force majeure at some sites, a measure that frees it from contractual obligations due to circumstances beyond its control .
The NOC said production “fell sharply” and exports fell to between 365,000 and 409,000 bpd, a loss of 865,000 bpd from the pre-April average.
Haftar’s forces control major oil facilities.
The drop in gas production has contributed to Libya’s chronic blackouts that last up to 12 hours a day.
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