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EDITOR IN CHIEF- ABDULLAH BIN SALIM AL SHUEILI

Benghazi celebrates after expelling ultras

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Forced from his neighbourhood in Libya’s Benghazi three years ago, Said al Mabruk is looking forward to going back after extremist forces were driven from the city.


“I will finally be able to go home. I can die in peace now,” the 72-year-old said after military strongman Khalifa Haftar announced that extremist fighters had been ousted from Libya’s second city. Like thousands of his fellow Benghazi residents, Mabruk took to the streets to celebrate the victory late on Wednesday.


Hundreds of cars paraded through the city in a deafening concert of blaring music and horns, under a night sky lit up by fireworks.


But the celebration did not come without a cost, with many in the city having lost loved ones in the battle.


Mabruk “paid a heavy price”, he said, with his son killed while fighting on the side of Haftar’s forces.


Haftar, the head of the Libyan National Army allied with Libya’s eastern-based government, launched his operation to retake Benghazi in 2014, three years after the 2011 uprising that toppled and killed Muammar Gaddafi. — AFP


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