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Tripoli, 18 June:
The bodies of five Tebus killed in fighting in Kufra last week were handed over to their families and . . .[restrict]buried yesterday according to a Tebu spokesman. Younis Essa, a cousin Kufra’s Tebu commander Abdul-Majid Essa, said the handover followed mediation by the reconciliation team of elders from Ajdabiya sent to Kufra by the NTC.
However, it has also been reported that the team was fired at by Tebus during the day and and that an elderly member was injured in the foot. There is no independent verification of the claim.
The Ajdabiya mediators have been in Kufra for several days trying to break the cycle of violence between the Tebu community on the one side and the town’s majority Zway tribe and the Libya Shield forces on the other.
Meanwhile, the ICRC’s medical team left Kufra yesterday and returned to Tripoli having evacuated 99 residents, 59 of them people who had wounded in the fighting, and 40 relatives accompanying them. Almost all are Tebus.
Despite the report of the shooting incident, the ICRC as well as the two sides in the clashes say that Kufra is now relatively quiet. However, there are claims and counter claims of attacks outside the town by both Tebus and Libya Shield forces.
Essa claimed that that a convoy of nine vehicles with food, medicine and an ambulance had been attacked by Shield forces on Saturday evening on its way to Kufra. The convoy, travelling via Rebyana, has set out from the largely Tebu town of Murzuk in southwestern Libya. Essa said that those in the convoy were mostly Tebus from Kufra who had gone to Murzuk for help.
For its part, the Shield forces claimed that a military post some 30 kilometres south of Kufra had been attacked by Tebu gunmen. They said that those responsible were Tebus who had crossed over the border from Chad. [/restrict]
