{"id":65843,"date":"2020-05-20T10:38:13","date_gmt":"2020-05-20T09:38:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/?p=65843"},"modified":"2020-05-20T10:38:13","modified_gmt":"2020-05-20T09:38:13","slug":"libyan-army-moves-to-liberate-town-of-al-asaba","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/libyan-army-moves-to-liberate-town-of-al-asaba\/","title":{"rendered":"Libyan army moves to liberate town of al-Asaba"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><em>The Libyan army on Wednesday morning announced its continued progress towards liberating a key town 100 kilometers (62 miles) southwest of the capital Tripoli from warlord Khalifa Haftar&#8217;s militia.<\/em><\/h2>\n<p>&#8220;The army continues advancing towards al-Asaba to liberate it from the Haftar militia &#8230; The clashes are very fierce,&#8221; said Mustafa al-Majei, spokesman for the government\u2019s Operation Volcano of Rage.<\/p>\n<p>Two army personnel were injured at the town\u2019s entrance by drones of the United Arab Emirates, one of the countries supporting the warlord\u2019s forces, he added.<\/p>\n<p>The spokesman stressed that retaking al-Asaba is essential to liberating the city of Tarhouna further south as it will help cut off supply lines to Haftar&#8217;s militia.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, local tribes in al-Asaba announced their support to the Libyan government.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Based on a meeting held by the tribes of the town of al-Asaba, it was decided to join the Government of National Accord,&#8221; the town\u2019s social council said on Facebook.<\/p>\n<p>Libya\u2019s army on Monday retook Al-Watiya Airbase occupied by warlord Khalifa Haftar&#8217;s militias, a key facility now back under government control after some six years under putschist forces.<\/p>\n<p>The move came after the Libyan army destroyed three Russian-made Pantsir type air defense systems used by Haftar\u2019s forces that were also supplied by the UAE.<\/p>\n<p>Libya&#8217;s government has been under attack by Haftar&#8217;s forces since April 2019, with more than 1,000 killed in the violence.<\/p>\n<p>Following the ouster of late ruler Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, Libya&#8217;s government was founded in 2015 under a UN-led political deal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Libyan army on Wednesday morning announced its continued progress towards liberating a key town 100 kilometers (62 miles) southwest of the capital Tripoli from warlord Khalifa Haftar&#8217;s militia. &#8220;The army continues advancing towards al-Asaba to liberate it from the Haftar militia &#8230; The clashes are very fierce,&#8221; said Mustafa al-Majei, spokesman for the government\u2019s &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":65844,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[1131],"class_list":["post-65843","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-africa","tag-libya"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65843","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65843"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65843\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65844"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65843"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65843"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65843"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}