Fighting rages near Libya's capital in push

Cairo: Just two days after rebel Libyan commander declared a final" and decisive battle for the capital Tripoli, heavy fighting raged for a 24-hour period between his troops and militias loosely allied with the internationally backed government based in the city, officials said Saturday.

The fighting came after Hifter, the leader of the self-styled Libyan National Army, said Thursday that the zero hour of his battle for Tripoli had begun, nearly eight months after he began an offensive to take the city from the country's Government of National accord supported by the UN.

The media office shared images of reinforcements arriving in Tripoli, including ground troops and pickup trucks with mounted machine guns and of clashes in southern parts of the city. Hifter's forces took control of the town of al-Tawghaar, just south of Tripoli, the reporter said. But Tripoli-based forces disputed that claim.

The fighting has threatened to plunge Libya into another bout of violence rivaling the scale of the 2011 conflict that ousted and killed longtime dictator Moammar Gadhafi.

In the chaos that followed Gadhafi's death, the country was divided into two parts a weak UN-supported administration in Tripoli and a rival government in the east aligned.

It is stated in a report that it shot down a Turkish-made drone over the town of Ain Zara south of the

capital. Hifter forces captured a major military camp from the Tripoli-allied militias and clashes continued around the camp, officials from both sides said.

It also further stated the launched airstrikes overnight against an air base at the Air Force Academy in the city of Misrata, targeting military warehouses allegedly housing Turkish-made drones used by Tripoli-allied militias, it was said by a reporter said spokesman Ahmed al-Mesmari.

Misrata, in western Libya, is the country's second largest city and is home to fierce militias who oppose Hifter and have been extremely important in the government's defense of Tripoli.

There was heavy fighting elsewhere around Tripoli in the new push by Hifter's forces and officials on both sides said the latest offensive has been more intense than Hifter's other offensives over the past eight months.

Since his troops marched toward Tripoli in April, Hifter has only been able to lay siege to the city, failing to claim it from the government of Prime Minister Fayez al-Sarraj.