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By Ashraf Abdul-Wahab.
Tripoli 14 October 2013:
An explosion this morning at a camp outside Sirte has killed four militants said to belong . . .[restrict]to Ansar Al-Sharia.
The deaths were confirmed by a local Sirte resident. The explosion before dawn was very loud, he said, and could be heard by people in the middle of the town even though it happened some 15 kilometres to the west. The area is controlled by Ansar Al-Sharia and where it had a training camp, said the source. He added that local officials were refusing to speak about the incident because the nearby presence of Ansar Al-Sharia was embarrassing. The source himself did not want to be named.
According to the Facebook page of Deputy Defence Minister Khaled Al-Sharif, the explosion was caused by ammunition blowing up. Military officials have since said that the militants were moving munitions by truck when they exploded.
Earlier the rumour mill had been working in overdrive with intense speculation on social media sites that the explosion was the result of a drone or a missile attack launched from a US ship.
Those killed, according to the Sirte source, were two local people and two from elsewhere in Libya, although he added that one of the others may in fact have been an Egyptian. He could not confirm it.
The two who lived in Sirte have been named Mohamed Mahmoud Al-Mashaiye and Adel Al-Forjani. [/restrict]
