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By Ashraf Abdul-Wahab.
Tripoli, 31 March 2014:
The Ministry . . .[restrict]of Youth and Sports is closed until further notice following an attack yesterday at its main offices in Tripoli’s suburb of Assebea.
“A small group came with guns and told everyone to leave”, Walid El Kilani, the Ministry’s International Cooperation Director, told the Libya Herald. “We don’t know why,” he said. There had been no chance to talk to the group. The men had not given any reasons or said who they were. “They just closed the offices and left.”
According to another source, the group – about 15 people – had threatened to shoot staff if they did not leave. They had also damaged equipment and scrawled slogans against the Muslim Brotherhood and Congress on walls.
The former Youth and Sports Minister, Abdul Salam Guaila, is a member of the Muslim Brotherhood-linked Justice and Construction Party but the present acting minister is not.
“We have a lot of work to do,” said El Kilani. “But we can’t. The Ministry is now closed and we don’t know when it will reopen. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe next week.”
So far, no one has claimed responsibility for the attack. However, it is known that Zintani elements are deeply opposed to the Brotherhood and to Congress continuing in office.
Last week, the commander of a Zintani Petroleum Facilities Guard unit at Derj which is blocking the gas pipeline from the Wafa field to the Mellitah complex on the coast said the action would stop only when the “GNC ceases to exist”, claiming that the body was controlled by the Brotherhood. [/restrict]
