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By Libya Herald reporters.
Tripoli, 5 April 2015:
Even as IS claimed responsibility for this morning’s suicide truck bombing of a Misratan checkpoint, . . .[restrict]condemnation of the attack came from members of the House of Representatives, in what some are interpreting as an olive branch to Misrata, the senior partner in the Libya Dawn antigovernment movement.
The HoR members condemned the attack in which six people died including two children. Their letter went on to offer condolences to the families of the victims. Pictures showed the blackened bridge and wrecked roadway where the truck’s load of explosives was detonated at the Sadadah check point to the east of Misrata.
The president of the rump GNC, Nuri Abu Sahmain, also denounced the truck bombing which he said had been carried out by unknown attackers.
In Misrata itself there was a demonstration that reportedly called for a “final battle to uproot IS and ex-regime followers in Sirte”. The protestors also called for Libya Dawn to defeat the “Tribes’ Army” – Libyan National Army – in the west and urged the international community to stop Libyan Air Force raids, which they said hit only civilian targets.
Overnight, commanders of the Misratan 166 Battlion tasked with driving IS out of Sirte warned people living near positions held by the terrorists to move away. A spokesman for the battalion, Khalid Abu Jazeya, was quoted by the Tripoli-based news agency LANA as saying that a curfew had been imposed on Sirte and its suburbs, to run between 10pm and 6am. Jazeya asked locals to observe the lockdown. [/restrict]
