Tripoli - Two women and two girls were
killed late on Tuesday when a shell landed on a beach near
Mitiga airport in the Libyan capital, Tripoli, officials said.
The shell also wounded 15 people, hospital official Mohamed
Ben Khalil told Libya Al-Ahrar channel. Pictures posted on
social media showed plastic furniture strewn on the sand under
strings of outdoor lights.
"The casualties are the result of clashes on Tuesday between
a security force and outlaws who fired a shell that fell on a
beach in front of Mitiga airport," Abdulsalam Ashour, a deputy
interior minister in Libya's U.N.-backed government, told
Al-Ahrar.
Other reports said the shell was fired during a revenge
attack against one of the capital's many armed factions.
Tripoli is home to a patchwork of armed groups, some of
which share control of Mitiga and the surrounding area. They
occasionally clash in turf wars and localised disputes.
The beach lies across the other side of a coastal road from
the airport in central Tripoli. It is popular with families
trying to escape the heat on summer evenings.