Suicide attack kills three Libyan soldiers

Three Libyan soldiers were killed and four others wounded Tuesday in a suicide attack carried out near Benghazi, a military official said.

The official said an attacker drove an explosives-laden car into the checkpoint, located about 100 kilometres west of Benghazi on the road to Ajdabiya.

The city had been a stronghold of Ansar al-Sharia and other militias, but an offensive led by army forces - allied with the Tobruk-based parliament - have managed to seize the upper hand in recent months, and now have near total control of the Libya’s eastern capital.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for Tuesday's attacks, however, violence is an almost deadly occurrence in the city, once seen as the birthplaces of the revolution that toppled long-time ruler Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.  

According to a well-known Benghazi-based blogger, Mutaz Gedallah who runs the Wake Up Benghazi website, there were at least 230 assassinations or assassination attempts in the city in 2014.

While there have been several high-profile killings of local activists, the blog noted that 70 percent of the targets were either army or police personnel. A further 17 percent were directed at Special Forces units.

However, the number of incidents have been declining since September when army units, as well as forces loyal to former rogue General Khalifa Haftar, who was reintegrated back into the army late last year, managed to launch a successful offensive, pushing the militias into several pockets across the city.

Libya has been plunged into chaos ever since Gaddafi’s oust with two rival parliaments - one based in Tripoli and the other in Tobruk - now vying for control. The UN has staged several attempted negotiations between the various factions but has so far made very little progress.

The latest round of talks is now slated to take place on Wednesday, although whether the talks will go ahead at all remains in doubt.

According to MEE sources, the Tobruk parliament has only sent relatively low-level negotiations which have been granted only a limited mandate, while the Tripoli-based delegation had not yet as of 3.00 GMT.