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By Hadi Fornaji.
Tripoli, 16 August 2013:
A senior police officer was murdered yesterday in the village of Abu Hadi, some 20 kilometres . . .[restrict]south of Sirte and the supposed birthplace of the former dictator, Muammar Qaddafi. Salem Milad Al-Magdobi, the deputy head of the police station was shot by an unknown gunman as he left the local mosque after dawn prayers.
According to the Libyan news agency LANA, the National Security Directorate authorities do not yet know the reason for the killing but suspect that the motive was personal rather than political.
Four days ago, however, two members of the army’s Zawia Martyrs Battalion, the main security force in Sirte, were killed by unknown gunmen while on their way to their headquarters in Abu Hadi.
At the end of June, another six members of the brigade were murdered in a nearby ambush.
There has been a steady undercurrent of violence in the Sirte of late, although common criminality is seen as the main cause. Last month the electricity station was bombed twice and there has been a spate of raids on local banks.
The situation is comparable to that in Benghazi, indeed there may be a link. When Sirte’s law courts were attacked late last month, the same day that a police station in Benghazi was also hit, the Interior Minister, Mohamed Sheikh, said that he thought the two incidents were connected.
An investigation into the latest killing has been opened. [/restrict]
