Flights resume at Tripoli airport after one-week hiatus

Tripoli’s international airport on Friday reopened one week after being closed due to fierce fighting on the city’s outskirts between rival militia groups, according to airport officials.

Airport Director Lutfi al-Tabib told reporters that the airport had received its first flight Friday morning — from Saudi Arabia — while another flight had departed en route to Tunisia later the same day.

All scheduled flights, he added, would likely resume within the next several hours.

Last Friday, the Libyan authorities suspended all air traffic at the airport after a number of mortar shells fell in the vicinity.

All flights — international and domestic — were temporarily diverted through Libya’s Misurata airport, located roughly 210 kilometers east of Tripoli.

Tripoli remained calm for the third consecutive day on Friday thanks to a UN-brokered ceasefire signed earlier this week between rival armed groups.

According to Libya’s Health Ministry, at least 66 people were killed in the fighting that first erupted on August 26.

Libya has been dogged by turmoil since 2011 when a bloody NATO-backed uprising led to the death of longstanding leader Muammar Gaddafi.

Since then, Libya’s stark political divisions have yielded two rival seats of power — one in Tobruk and another in capital Tripoli — and a host of heavily-armed militia groups.