On Saturday, the former Head of the dissolved Libyan Media Corporation (LMC), Mohamed Baio, praised the efforts being exerted by the Libyan National Army (LNA) in clearing the country from the hotbeds of the Islamic State (IS) terrorist organisation.
Baio stressed that Benghazi had the upper hand over terrorism thanks to the efforts and sacrifices of the LNA and security services.
“Benghazi defeated terrorism and saved the country from IS, whose media voices are still inciting death and strife in Tripoli,” Baio said in a Facebook post.
He added, “today Benghazi has victory over chaos, absurdity, and rot thanks to the army and security services.”
Since last week, the security services in Cyrenaica (eastern Libya) continued their campaigns to pursue organized crime gangs that profess all kinds of smuggling, especially weapons, and drugs, and dealt them a new blow, by seizing large quantities of weapons that were about to be smuggled to Egyptian territory.
The campaign, which is described as the largest of its kind in the last 10 years, began with a raid on a neighbourhood where drugs are sold openly in the city of Benghazi.
This ignited what looked like a short street war between drug dealers and the army and police forces, followed by a campaign to collect unlicensed uncontrolled weapons. The campaign has achieved satisfactory results so far, according to a statement and photos issued by the Ministry of the Interior.
Last Monday, the Security Directorate of the Libyan city of Tobruk, the largest city close to the border with Egypt, announced the seizure of large quantities of dangerous weapons south of the city before they were to be smuggled into Egyptian territory through the desert oasis of Al Jaghbub.
The Directorate’s media office showed a video clip of the large quantities of weapons. In a press conference, Brigadier General Sami Idris, Director of Tobruk Security, described the confiscated weapons as “specific and dangerous.”
“The confiscated weapons are unconventional and are not of the types usually handled by individuals, such as rifles and machine guns. These are weapons usually used by terrorist organizations, and this is left to specialists in this field.” Brigadier General Idris said.
“The seized weapons were intended to be smuggled into Egypt, but information received from the Jaghbub police station indicated that there were strange movements in the northeast of the area, prompting the security forces to move and monitor the place. After gathering intelligence information, it was found that there were weapons hidden in the area in the desert in preparation for smuggling,” he added.
The internal Security Services of the Cyrenaica authorities have also recently launched a campaign that began by deploying a number of vehicles for detecting weapons and ammunition in a number of neighbourhoods in the city. This resulted in the seizure of hundreds of light and medium weapons.