Casualties from the battle for Libya's capital mounted on Tuesday while Daesh killed three people in a desert town, illustrating how militants may exploit renewed chaos. Medical facilities reported 47 people killed and 181 wounded in recent days as eastern forces seek to take Tripoli from an internationally-recognized government, the World Health Organization said. The fatalities were mainly fighters, although they also comprised nine civilians including two doctors, the WHO said. The eastern Libyan National Army (LNA) forces of Khalifa Haftar — a former general in ousted strongman Muammar Gaddafi's army — seized the sparsely populated but oil-rich south earlier this year before heading toward Tripoli this month. They are fighting on the southern side of the city, where witnesses said on Monday afternoon the LNA had lost control of a former airport and withdrawn down the road. — Reuters The government of Prime Minister Fayez Al-Serraj, who has run Tripoli since 2016 as part of a U.N.-brokered deal that Haftar boycotted, is seeking to repel the LNA with the help of armed groups from Misrata. Serraj's forces carried out an air strike on an LNA position in the suburb of Suq al-Khamis on Tuesday, a resident and an eastern military source said, without giving more details. — Reuters
