Black smoke rose as men burned tires and torched cars during the incident on Friday, after one protester broke down the compound’s gate with a bulldozer and others attacked the walls with construction tools, local media reported. The building was empty, as Friday is the weekend in Libya. Libya’s House of Representatives is based in Tobruk, more than 1,000 miles east of the capital Tripoli, following the 2014 east-west split that came three years after the popular revolution that ousted dictator Muammar Gaddafi. A separate legislature, officially known as the Supreme Council of State, is based in Tripoli as the oil-rich North African country remains divided between rival administrations vying for control. Libya, sweltering in the summer heat, has endured days of power outages – a situation made worse by the blockade of key oil facilities amid entrenched political rivalries. “We want the lights to work,” chanted the protesters, some of them waving the green flags of the Gaddafi regime. The parliament condemned the “acts of vandalism and arson” of its headquarters. The interim prime minister of the Tripoli-based government, Abdul Hamid Dbeiba, meanwhile expressed support for the protesters’ concerns in a message on Twitter. The two governments have been vying for power in Libya for months: one based in Tripoli, led by Dbeiba, and the other led by former interior minister Fathi Bashaga, who was appointed by parliament and supported by the warlord based in East side. Khalifa Haftar. The presidential and parliamentary elections, initially set for last December, were meant to cap a UN-led peace process after the last major round of violence ended in 2020. However, the vote was never held due to several controversial nominations and deep disagreements about the legal basis of the polls between the rival centers of power. The United Nations said on Thursday that talks between rival Libyan institutions aimed at breaking the deadlock had failed to resolve key differences. Parliament Speaker Aguila Saleh and Supreme Council of State Chairman Khaled al-Mishri met at the UN in Geneva for three days of talks to discuss a draft constitutional framework for the elections. While some progress was made, it was not enough to move towards elections, with the two sides still at odds over who could run for president, the top UN envoy for Libya, Stephanie Williams, said. On Saturday, Williams condemned the raid on the headquarters: “The right of the people to demonstrate peacefully should be respected and protected, but riots and acts of vandalism like the raid on the headquarters of the House of Representatives late yesterday in Tobruk are completely unacceptable”. The prospect of elections appears as distant as ever since parliament appointed Bashaga, arguing that Dbeiba’s term had expired. After Basaga failed to enter Tripoli in May, the rival administration took over further east in Gaddafi’s coastal city of Sirte. There have been repeated skirmishes between armed groups in Tripoli, raising fears of a return to full-scale conflict. Demonstrators gathered in other cities on Friday, including Tripoli, where protesters held up effaced images of Dbeiba and Basaga. Subscribe to First Edition, our free daily newsletter – every morning at 7am. BST “Popular protests have erupted across Libya in outrage at the crumbling quality of life, the entire political class that built it, and the UN that inspired them to bring about the promised change,” tweeted Tarek Megerisi of the European Council on Foreign Relations. “Things are quickly escalating and the answer will determine the Libyan summer.” On Thursday, Libya’s National Oil Company (NOC) announced losses of more than $3.5bn (£2.9bn) since the shutdown and declared force majeure at some sites, a move that frees it from contractual obligations due to circumstances beyond its control. The NOC said production “fell sharply” and exports fell to between 365,000 and 409,000 bpd, a loss of 865,000 bpd compared to the pre-April average. Haftar’s forces control major oil facilities. Falling gas production has contributed to Libya’s chronic power outages, which last up to 12 hours a day.
