The forces of Khalid Haftar’s Libyan National Army attacked Islamist bases in the Sidi Faraj and al-Hawari districts of Benghazi; residents fled. Haftar’s forces reportedly surrounded Ansar al Sharia fighters in Sidi Faraj and took control of the district. Electricity is out in much of Benghazi. A special forces member and another man were assassinated in Benghazi. A Marj imam who was a member of Dar Al-Ifta, Libya’s top religious authority, was tortured and killed. The offices of Al Jazeera in Tripoli and Benghazi closed after attacks following the publication of an audio clip in which a leader of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), Hussein Jazwi, along with Ajdabiya Local Council head Salem Subhi, is heard asking Al Jazeera’s former Libya bureau chief, Iraqi Abdel-Azeem Mohamed, to get funding from Qatar to help them defeat Haftar’s forces. Al Jazeera and Qatar called the clip a fake, but Haftar said it was authentic, and accused Qatar of supporting Islamist forces in Libya. The al-Battar Brigade, a Syria-trained Libyan militia affiliated with the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) and Ansar al Sharia, threatened to avenge the death of an emir who was killed in Derna by the rival Abu Slim Martyrs Brigade, which is linked to al Qaeda’s Syrian branch, the Al Nusrah Front.
