Car bomb wounds Libyan police officer
Security official says Benghazi attack shows police and army officers are under surveillance in eastern region.
A senior police officer has been gravely wounded in an overnight bombing in Libya’s second city of Benghazi, according to a security official.
Colonel Mohamed al-Hijazi, the eastern city’s security spokesman, said on Saturday that the officer had been returning to Benghazi from the southern city of Sabha to visit his family when the blast happened.
“Colonel Faouzi al-Oujli was critically injured when an explosive device placed in his car went off,” he told AFP news agency.
“The same method was used as in other attacks on members of the security forces – a home-made bomb planted in the car.”
Hijazi said such attacks were well-planned and systematic, and showed that police and army officers were under surveillance.
Five people were wounded when an explosive device detonated outside a police station in the Sidi Hassan district of Benghazi on Friday, Hijazi said.
A bag containing explosives was thrown from a car in the central Sidi Hussein quarter, hitting a building that belonged to a police force entrusted with guarding electricity installations.
Wave of attacks
Hijazy said this was not the first time the building had been targeted and that it was largely destroyed in the blast.
An army colonel was killed in the eastern town of Derna and another was seriously wounded in a second attack in Benghazi on Wednesday.
Since the toppling of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, eastern Libya has seen a wave of attacks against members of the military and police and judges who served under the former regime.
Benghazi was the cradle of the 2011 uprising.
Chris Stevens, the US ambassador to Libya, and three other Americans were killed in an attack on Washington’s consulate in Benghazi on September 11 last year.
The chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee issued two subpoenas on Thursday to the State Department for documents related to the deadly assault on the US diplomatic mission.
There was an attempt to kill Jean Dufriche, France’s honorary consul in the city, on June 5 this year.