TRIPOLI (Reuters) – Five Egyptian embassy staff kidnapped in Tripoli were abducted in retaliation for the arrest of a Libyan militia commander by Egyptian authorities, the Libyan government said yesterday.
Four diplomatic staff were snatched in Tripoli yesterday, including the cultural attache, and gunmen kidnapped another on Friday, forcing Cairo to evacuate its embassy and Benghazi consulate as a precautionary measure.
The kidnappings underlined Libya’s instability two years after Muammar Gaddafi’s fall, with heavily-armed former rebels and Islamist militants who fought in the uprising still challenging state authority.
No group claimed responsibility, but the Islamist-leaning Operations Room for Libya Revolutionaries, one of the many militias that fought Gaddafi in the NATO-backed uprising, reported its commander had been arrested in Egypt.
The Operations Room, a group of Islamist-leaning former rebel fighters nominally hired by the government to secure Tripoli, was accused of briefly abducting Libya’s Prime Minister Ali Zeidan in October last year.
