by Mahmoud Darwesh, Nawas Derraji
TRIPOLI, June 22 (Xinhua) -- The Libyan eastern-based army, led by Gen. Khalifa Haftar, has announced full control of the oil crescent region after defeating the militants who had been occupying the region since last week.
According to the army spokesman Ahmad Mismari, the forces have taken over the region and continued to pursue the fleeing militants in the west of the area.
"Our armed forces have caused heavy losses of lives and equipment, and seized large amounts of weapons and ammunition," Mismari said in a statement.
Haftar declared on Thursday that it was time to "liberate the oil crescent region from the grip of terrorist groups," the spokesman added.
Benghazi Defense Brigades, a militant group allied with Ibrahim Jathran, a wanted former chief of the oil installation guards service, launched an attack on the Libyan oil crescent region a few days ago and clashed with the army forces there.
Libya's state-owned National Oil Corporation (NOC) evacuated all its employees from the area, and announced that the attack caused losses of 240,000 barrels of oil.
NOC also warned against an environmental disaster caused by the damage of oil tanks.
A medical source revealed that 16 Libyan army soldiers were killed and 20 others injured in the clashes.
"When the terrorists, mainly Jathran, launched the attack, we withdrew tactically and began the process of mobilization for about a week. The air force launched air strikes in Ras Lanuf and Es Sidra oil ports over the past few days and destroyed their forces and heavy weapons," Mismari explained.
The process of taking over the large oil ports of Ras Lanuf and Es Sidra took 40 minutes and was more like a "surgical operation," he added.
The spokesman pointed out that despite defeats by the army more than once, the militants "keep returning to assemble their forces and receive support from local and international parties with huge funding."
Mismari revealed that 1,200 mercenaries from Chad, along with a number of Libyans, participated in the attack on the oil crescent region, using about 200 armored vehicles.
Their attack aimed to thwart the recent Paris conference between the Libyan parties to solve the political crisis, which resulted in an agreement to hold parliamentary and presidential elections on Dec. 10, he noted.
Mismari vowed that the army would "stand firmly against any such attempts to undermine the political process we respect and commit to, in accordance with the UN plan."
The oil crescent region is located some 500 km east of the capital Tripoli. It contains the country's largest oil ports.
Mustafa Sanalla, the NOC chairman, said he was monitoring all developments in the oil crescent after the army took over the region.
On the sidelines of the 174th OPEC meeting in Austria on Thursday, Sanalla expressed hope that "pumping of crude oil from Ras Lanuf and Es Sidra oil ports would be resumed immediately after maintenance and security checks are carried out once the two ports are reopened."
Mohamed Abdullah, a lawmaker of the eastern-based House of Representatives (parliament), said the army's control of the oil crescent region "foiled a new attempt by some parties to disrupt any political settlement process in Libya and end the division that has existed since 2014."
"The movement of subversive groups that attacked the oil ports has two signs: the first is political that aims to disrupt any process of rapprochement between the political parties, and the second aims to destroy the national economy that has recently begun to recover," Abdullah told Xinhua.
Oil-rich Libya has been plagued by insecurity and chaos since the 2011 uprising that toppled former leader Muammar Gaddafi's regime.
As key sources of income in Libya, oil and gas trades account for 94 percent of the country's foreign exchange earnings.
Over the past years, Libya suffered losses of more than 140 billion U.S. dollars after repeated closure of oil fields and ports, as well as low oil prices in the global market.
