An armed group stormed into Shakshok power plant in the western mountain region on Thursday for the second time this week to protest the load shedding policy and power outages that were ordered by the General Electricity Company of Libya (GECOL.)

The head of the power plant, Abdullah Al-Badri, confirmed that the gunmen attacked the plant and demanded scraping the load shedding policy, threatening to use force against the workers if power outages continue in their districts.

Al-Badri said the gunmen decried the fact that their districts are left without electric power for long hours as Al-Ruwais 220 kV power plant has also been out of the general electricity network, leading to a blackout last week.

"Because of the heatwave that hit Libya last week, the restoration of power was delayed and left western mountain areas troubled by long outage hours." He added.

The power plants of Al-Ruwais and Shakshok were previously attacked this week by gunmen from western mountain cities, which are refusing to be included in the GECOL's load shedding hours that aim to drop the overload burden on the general network, thus adding to the burden of the GECOL and obliging it to conduct long-hour load shedding programs to avoid collapse of the power network and a total blackout across Libya.