Libya’s former security head survives bombing
Hashem Bashar, tasked with integrating Libya’s militias into security forces, targeted in car bomb attack in Tripoli.
The head of the Libyan capital’s now disbanded Supreme Security Committee survived a car bomb detonated outside his home, officials said.
Hashem Bashar, who now heads a committee tasked with integrating Tripoli’s myriad of former rebel militias into the security forces, told AFP news agency that he was sure he was the target of the blast.
But he said he had no idea of the identity or motives of the bombers.
The explosion, which occurred before dawn on Friday, caused extensive damage to Bashar’s home in the capital’s Souk al-Jomaa shopping district as well as adjacent buildings, an AFP photographer reported.
Several neighbours suffered minor injuries.
“If there are people out there who don’t want to build just institutions… and they attacked me because I represent the path to that, then we welcome death and anything they will try to do to foil our efforts,” Bashar told Al Jazeera.
The Supreme Security Committee was formed after rebel forces ousted now slain leader Muammar Gaddafi from Tripoli in August 2011.
Nominally under the command of the interior ministry, its hardline religeous leanings put it increasingly at odds with other former rebel groups.
By the time of its dissolution last year, it was effectively just one of the multiple militias vying for control of the capital.
Bashar has since distanced himself from his former rebel comrades and urged them to integrate their fighters into the regular security forces.