By Imed LAMLOUM
TRIPOLI, January 25, 2014 (AFP) - Kidnappers seized Egypt's cultural attache and three other embassy staff in the Libyan capital on Saturday, a day after a group snatched another Egyptian official in the city.
The abduction of the diplomats came as fighting in the south and west of the country claimed more than 150 lives, adding to the sense of chaos in Libya more than two years after rebels overthrew and killed longtime dictator Moamer Kadhafi.
The kidnapping of the four diplomats came a day after an administrative adviser at Egypt's embassy was seized, and despite Libya's announcement of "reinforced security measures" there.
Foreigners have been targeted several times in recent weeks: two Italians were seized last week in east Libya and a South Korean trade representative was released by security forces on Wednesday, three days after being abducted in Tripoli.
Prime Minister Ali Zeidan was himself briefly abducted by a militia last October.
A Libyan security official would not rule out that Friday's kidnapping was a response to the arrest in Egypt that same day of a prominent former rebel commander who fought in the uprising.
Shaaban Hadeia, head of the Operations Centre of Libya's Thuwar (revolutionaries), was arrested in Alexandria, the source added.
The Operations Centre had posted on Facebook that there could be a "possible reaction from the thuwar."
But one of the group's leaders, Adel al-Ghariani, told AFP they were not involved in the kidnappings and called for Hadeia's release.
The presidency of the General National Congress, Libya's highest political authority, has ordered its mission in Cairo to demand an explanation for the ex-rebel leader's arrest and to seek his release.
Egypt's foreign ministry spokesman Badr Abdelatty confirmed Hadeia was detained in Egypt but did not say why.
"If Hadeia's involvement (in any case) is not established, naturally we will release him," Abdelatty told AFP, adding that investigations were ongoing.
Abdelatty said that all Egyptian employees at the embassy in Libya were evacuated as a "temporary precautionary measure."
Unrest in the south
Libya has struggled to integrate into the security forces rebel groups that helped topple Kadhafi. Some militias have carved out their own fiefdoms, each with its own ideology and regional allegiances.
The situation is especially dire in eastern Libya, where radical Islamists have been accused of launching dozens of attacks on security forces and Western interests, mostly in second city Benghazi.
Two blasts hit Benghazi on Saturday without causing any casualties, one targeting a military intelligence base and the other a Koranic school.
Security forces said Friday they had arrested four people with a "list of officers" who had been killed or were marked for assassination, in an operation that left one soldier dead.
Authorities are also facing unrest elsewhere in the country, and the toll from two weeks of clashes in the south and west rose on Saturday to 154 dead and 463 wounded, the health ministry said.
The ministry said the toll included those killed in ethnic clashes in the main southern city of Sebha and in Wershefana, west of Tripoli.
Security sources said they had launched an operation this week against "armed gangs," allegedly including Kadhafi supporters in Wershefana, seen as a bastion of loyalists to the former regime.
Earlier, the director of the hospital in Sebha had said 88 people had died and more than 130 had been wounded in the ethnic violence in the south.
The fighting erupted between members of the Toubou minority, a non-Arab ethnic group, and armed Arab tribesmen of the Awled Sleiman.
There has since been fighting between the Awled Sleiman and other Arab tribes that is reported to have involved Kadhafi supporters.
Libya's General National Congress declared a state of emergency in the south on January 18 at an extraordinary session to discuss the violence in Sebha.
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