Tobruk based "Dignity Movement For Aid" group helps Benghazi residents caught up in fighting - via AP

  • 10 years ago
A Tobruk aid organisation is helping Libyans fleeing fighting in the eastern city of Benghazi.

"Dignity Movement For Aid" is providing food and bedding.

The continuing unrest here in Benghazi has driven scores of people from their homes.

This week the UN refugee agency reported that more than 100,000 Libyans have fled in the past month alone.

Gunfire, artillery blasts and air-strikes have become commonplace.

In the relative calm of Tobruk, the non-governmental organisation (NGO) "Dignity Movement for Aid" is helping those who have been displaced and have arrived in the city.

The group is providing various bedding items, food and milk for children.

It is also planning to send a convoy into Benghazi.

"This movement is made up by youth volunteers, and thanks to God we have now started for four days now and things are going well till now. We are receiving donations of food stocks thanks to God and in about three days we will send a convoy to Benghazi," says Mohamed El-Sherif, Founding member of Dignity Movement For Aid.

Government-allied forces, including those led by former General Khalifa Hifter, have been battling Islamist militias for control of Benghazi since mid-October.

Rami Ahmed is one of those displaced by the fighting and is now in Tobruk.

"The residents of the city of Tobruk came to us and asked us 'what is your problem?' We told them that we do not have a place to stay, so they took us to their homes and farms to stay in, and I thank them for what they have done to us," he explains.

"We stayed for four days before Eid El-Adha, and then the Tobruk local council headed by Fariha Al-Darhab rented a building for us to stay in, they did not have that much money but with their efforts and the kind residents here in the city they managed to rent them for us."

There's been a surge of violence across Libya - the worst since rebels backed by NATO warplanes overthrew Moammar Gadhafi.

The conflict is rooted in subsequent transitional governments' reliance on a web of militias - many of them former rebel brigades - to restore order after Libya's regular army and police were shattered by the country's uprising.

An elected government and parliament have been convening in the eastern city of Tobruk, while parallel bodies formed of mainly Islamist factions - who were largely defeated in June elections - are meeting in the capital, further fragmenting the vast, petroleum-rich country.

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