Libya’s House of Representatives, which has been officially recognized, reappointed Abdullah al-Thinni,who resigned last week as prime minister of the interim government.

    LIBYA’S parliament reappointed Prime Minister Abdullah al-Thinni on Monday as the government lost control of ministries in the capital where armed groups have taken over and a separate parliament has claimed legitimacy.

    Al-Thinni has been tasked to form a crisis government within two weeks.

    Meanwhile, Islamist militia Libyan Dawn are now claiming to have seized part of the U.S. embassy compound from pro-government fighters Zintan. The group are also in control of Tripoli’s international airport.

    The government also admitted Monday from its hideout in the east of the country that it has in effect lost control of Tripoli to armed militias.

    The interim government led by Al-Thinni, said armed groups, mostly Islamist militias, were in control of ministries and they are blocking government workers.

    “Ministry and state offices in Tripoli have been occupied by armed militias who are preventing government workers from entering and are threatening their superiors,” the government said in a statement.

    It said the interim government was in contact with officials and “trying to ensure the continuity of services from afar.”

    Libya has been sliding into chaos since Muammar Gaddafi was overthrown and killed three years ago, with interim authorities confronting powerful militias that fought to oust the veteran dictator.

    The interim government announced last week it had tendered its resignation to the elected parliament, days after a rival Islamist administration was created.

    The reappointment of Al-Thinni, a former defense minister and career soldier who has been prime minister since March, sets him the challenge of reasserting government control over a country where many fear a descent into full-scale civil war.

    Parliamentary spokesman Faraj Hashem said 64 of the 106 representatives present had voted for Al-Thinni and the house had instructed him “to form a crisis government within a period of time not exceeding two weeks.”

    U.S. Foreign Minister John Kerry called Al-Thinni before his appointment to give his support, the Libyan Government said in a statement. Both stressed the need for national dialogue and reconciliation, it added.

    In a stark illustration of the government’s loss of control in Tripoli, a video posted online showed dozens of men, some armed, crowding around a swimming pool at an U.S. Embassy building, with some diving in from a nearby building.

    Washington said Sunday that an armed group had taken over an abandoned annex of the U.S. Embassy but had not broken into the main compound. All embassy staff were evacuated last month.

    Late on Sunday, the government released a statement admitting it had lost its grip on many levers of power.

    “We announce that most ministries, institutions and state bodies in the capital of Tripoli are out of our control,” it said, adding that armed groups had prevented staff from entering some government buildings.

    All ministries, the central bank and the state-owned National Oil Corp. are located in the capital.

    The victory of Misrata forces in Tripoli has not yet affected oil production; but traders say ownership of the oil might be subject to legal challenges if those forces take control of the central bank, where crude revenues are booked.

    The groups now controlling Tripoli, some of which have Islamist leanings, refuse to recognize the parliament in Tobruk, which has a strong liberal and federalist presence.

    They have reconvened the previous parliament, the General National Congress, in which Islamists were strongly represented.

    The government said in a statement that armed factions had attacked a Tripoli camp for internally displaced people from the western town of Tawergha.

    It did not name the attackers. The Misrata factions accuse the Tawergha people of having backed Libya’s former dictator Gaddafi.

    The fluid situation in Tripoli has been exacerbated by separate clashes in the eastern port city of Benghazi where Khalifa Haftar, a renegade general from the Libyan army, has declared war on Islamist militants.

    On Monday, loud explosions and war planes could be heard from the area of the closed airport which Islamist forces have been trying to seize from Haftar’s forces allied to the regular army.

    The area is one of the last positions of army special forces after Islamists overran several camps. Residents said the Islamists including Ansar al-Sharia were trying to enter the Benina area, home to the airport and airbase. A nearby soccer stadium was also hit.

    Al-Thinni hails from the southern town of Ghadames.

    He graduated from military college in 1976 and then fought in the Libyan-Egyptian war while stationed in Tobruk.

    Al-Thinni was also a professor at the military college for seven years. However, after his brother — an Air Force pilot — absconded to Egypt in a military plane in opposition to the Gaddafi regime, things became more difficult for al-Thinni, according to the Prime Minister ’s Office.

    He served time in prison because of his brother’s escape and faced other difficulties, until 1997 when he took early retirement.

    Al-Thinni became defense minister in August 2013.(SD-Agencies)

    British envoy

    visits Libya to

    back elected

    parliament against rival assembly

    A BRITISH envoy visited Libya’s parliament at its new seat in the eastern town of Tobruk on Tuesday in a show of support against a rival assembly set up by armed groups who seized the capital of Tripoli last month.

    Senior officials and the elected House of Representatives moved to the east of Libya when Tripoli fell to an alliance of armed factions from the western city of Misrata in August after a long battle with rival groups.

    The fighting and lawlessness also prompted most countries, including Britain, to close their diplomatic missions in Libya.

    The conflict is part of a wider struggle among former rebels who helped topple Gaddafi in 2011 but have now turned their weapons on each other in their fight to take power and control the country’s vast oil reserves.

    “We recognize the legitimacy of the Libyan parliament,” Britain’s Libya Special Envoy Jonathan Powell said in a televised news conference from Tobruk.

    Western powers like Britain worry Libya will turn into a failed state that could flood Europe with migrants and becomes a safe haven for militant Islamists.

    (SD-Agencies)