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By Sami Zaptia.
Tripoli, 18 May 2013:
Two small gelatina-type explosions went off at lunch time in separate parts of central Tripoli today.
The . . .[restrict]first was set off under a car parked metres from the Greek embassy in the Gazzala area of town centre, whilst the other was set off in a car park in Al-Nasr Street. The Al-Nasr Street explosion seemed to have no obvious target.
Both bombs went off at exactly lunch prayer time, a security guard at the Greek embassy site told Libya Herald when we visited the scene.
Early unofficial accounts think that a car came driving past the Greek embassy, and that the homemade device was thrown under the parked car on the other side of the Greek embassy, next to the mosque. The attackers’ vehicle then sped off. No causalities or property damage was caused.
The authorities had quickly removed the damaged car for further investigations. There were barely any marks on the road surface with a few scratch marks on the wall.
The roads were quiet today near the embassy, as Saturday is a holiday for most. There are some security guards positioned permanently at the corner of the Greek embassy crossroads, as the area houses numerous embassies including the Saudi, Algerian and Dutch.
Security personnel at the scene could not confirm if there was any CCTV footage of the incident.
At the site the Head of Tripoli Local Council, Sadat Badri, was holding an ad hoc meeting with embassy and security personnel. Plans to blockade the roads and prevent cars from parking any nearer to the series of embassies in the area were discussed.
Pressed by Libya Herald to speculate off record as to the meaning of setting off of these two very small homemade devices, one security member said that it could be a message, or to test security’s reaction or a test run for another attempt. He would not elaborate any further. [/restrict]
