Libya cut off from world by air as last foreign airline suspends flights

Turkish Airlines suspends flights to Misrata after earlier pulling routes to Tripoli, Benghazi and Sebha

By Louisa Loveluck, Cairo

The last foreign airline operating in Libya has suspended all flights to and from the country, cutting the North African nation off from the world by air as it slides further into chaos.

Turkish Airlines said on Tuesday that it had suspended flights to Misrata, its only remaining destination in Libya, after it had earlier pulled its flights to the capital, Tripoli, as well as Benghazi and the inland desert city of Sebha.

"We have suspended our Misrata flights until further notice, due to operational issues," a company spokesman said.

Since the fall of longtime dictator Muamar Ghaddafi in 2011, Libya has been a country divided and spiralling ever-further into chaos. While its UN-recognised government skulks in the eastern city of Tobruk, an Islamist-dominated assembly has clung onto power in Tripoli, despite losing an election. The two governments are nominally allied to rival militias but their control over the fighters can be limited in practice.

Forces loyal to Libya's internationally-recognised government began airstrikes on militia-held Misrata at the end of December, hitting its school of aviation, just thirty minutes after a Turkish Airlines flight had taken off from the city's airport. The port and a steel plant were also hit.

On Tuesday, the Tobruk government demanded tighter control over sea routes into the country, threatening to shoot at any vessel approaching ports without prior permission.

A day earlier, it had drawn stinging criticism from the Greek authorities, after Libyan warplanes bombed a Greek-owned oil tanker, killing two European crewmen. Greece's foreign ministry condemned the attack as "unprovoked and cowardly", but the Tobruk government insisted the tanker had been carrying militants to the Islamist-held town of Derna, where one of the town's patchwork of militant groups has declared allegiance to Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (Isil).

On Monday, a Tobruk representative had appealed for weapons to combat its rival militias, calling on member nations to fulfil their "legal and moral responsibilities"