A group of police officers from Sabha have been attacked by a militia force affiliated with Khalifa Haftar while on a mission to transfer new police cars dispatched by the Interior Ministry to the Sabha Security Directorate.

In a correspondence submitted to the Ministry of Interior, the Security Directorate of Sabha said that the team of officers was assigned to receive eleven new four-wheel-drive vehicles allocated to the Sabha police by the Ministry of Interior.

"When the squad was driving the new vehicles back to Sabha, an armed group loyal to Haftar under the command of Mabrouk Sahban attacked the police at the "Qira" area in ​​the Shati Municipality, and took the vehicles and the officers to the Brak Base (the southern operations HQ), the security directorate said.

The officers were reportedly hassled in a truck and sent back to Sabha.

The security directorate held the militias of Haftar and Mabrouk Sahban responsible for destabilizing the southern region.

In consequence, a fight erupted in the early hours of Tuesday morning in Sabha between a military formation belonging to the Government of National Unity and a pro-Haftar militia force.

Anadolu news agency quoted a source from the Security Directorate of Sabha as saying that the clashes erupted in Central Sabha between the Tariq bin Ziyad Brigade of Haftar and the 116th Brigade of the Presidential Council and lasted for hours.

According to Libya's social platforms, the two parties exchanged fire with heavy and medium weapons near the Qurda area, forcing residents in nearby neighbourhoods to flee their homes. There was no information about the losses or damage caused by the fresh clash.

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