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Tripoli — An armed group abducted a former Libyan deputy prime minister and newly-elected MP, Mustapha Abu Shagur, in the capital Tripoli on Tuesday, his nephew said.“Men in three cars kidnapped my uncle from his house and took him away to an unknown destination”, Issam al-Naass told AFP.

“Twenty minutes before his abduction, Abu Shagur received a call from a stranger who asked him to leave the house because of imminent danger”, he added.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the kidnapping.

Abu Shagur was elected a deputy in Libya’s 25 June legislative election, in which he stood as an independent candidate.

He is due to take up his post on August 4, at the opening session of the Chamber of Representatives, elected in place of an interim parliament, the General National Congress.

Abu Shagur was deputy prime minister for a year under Abdelrahim al-Kib, who led a first transitional government in the wake of the 2011 uprising that ousted Muammar Gaddafi.

Kidnappings and assassinations of politicians, rights activists and journalists have multiplied in the chaos gripping Libya since Gaddafi’s fall.

Ex-prime minister Ali Zeidan was abducted for several hours last October, highlighting the failure of authorities to rein in dozens of militias across the country.

Meanwhile, A coalition of armed groups has overrun a major Libyan army base held by allies of a renegade general in the eastern city of Benghazi.

Special forces troops of the Saiqa brigade, loyal to Khalifa Haftar, abandoned their base in southeast Benghazi on Tuesday after coming under attack, military officials and residents said.

“We have withdrawn from the army base after heavy shelling,” Saiqa official Fadel al-Hassi said.

Benghazi has suffered months-long battles between militias and forces allied with Haftar, who launched a campaign aimed at crushing what he calls “terrorists” and “extremists” including Ansar al-Sharia.

The official Twitter account of Ansar, a group inspired by al-Qaeda and dominant in Benghazi, posted that it had taken over the base.

In the fighting, a jet crashed after Haftar’s forces launched attacks on groups including Ansar.

Mohammed Hegazi, a spokesman for Haftar’s so-called National Army, claimed that the jet crashed due to a “technical failure” and that the pilot safely escaped. The base’s fall came as a ceasefire brokered late on Monday between Libyan militias in Tripoli was reportedly broken.

A shell has struck an oil depot tank in Tripoli’s Sedi Bu-Salem district, an official with Libya’s state-run oil corporation told the AP news agency. The tank did not catch fire.

The ceasefire agreement was made on Monday to allow firefighters to battle an out-of-control fire near Tripoli’s airport, which was devastated by shelling between the militias that have controlled it since the fall of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.

The confrontations have prompted many diplomats and foreigners, including the US ambassador in Libya, and staff from the UN and Canadian embassy, to flee the country.

Meanwhile, more than 20 migrants have died and dozens are missing after their makeshift boat sank off the Libyan coast, the navy said late Tuesday.

“A navy patrol on Monday rescued 22 clandestine migrants who were clinging to debris from their boat”, spokesperson Colonel Ayoub Kassem said, adding that more than 20 bodies were plucked from the water.

Survivors said some 150 people had been aboard the vessel, which sank some 100km east of the Libyan capital Tripoli.

Search operations for possible other survivors continued into yesterday. — AFP