Dozens killed after Benghazi militia opens fire on protesters
At least 26 people killed in clashes after protest march calling on Libya's militias to disband reached Libya Shield base
At least 26 people were killed and 80 wounded when a militia in the Libyan city of Benghazi opened fire on protesters gathered outside its base on Saturday.
The demonstrators had gathered outside the headquarters of the Libya Shield brigade to demand it to submit to the authority of Libya's security forces.
Television pictures showed people and cars fleeing in panic from the scene amid the crackle of gunfire. Benghazi's Jala hospital was overwhelmed with casualties being brought in by ambulance and private vehicles, with doctors saying they were struggling to cope.
The Libyan prime minister, Ali Zidan, made a televised appeal for calm, and promised an investigation.
The killings came when an organised protest march calling for militias to disband wound its way through the streets of this eastern city to the Libya Shield base. A similar march was held without incident in Tripoli.
What happened next is unclear. There were reports that some in the crowd threw stones at the base, and militiamen fired back.
A spokesman for Libya Shield, Adel Tarhuni, claimed his men had no choice but to open fire after the base was attacked, and said one of his soldiers was among the dead. "We had to defend ourselves," he told a Libyan TV station.
Resentment has been growing across Libya over the refusal of revolutionary militias to heed calls by the government to disband.
Last month militias laid siege to Libya's foreign and justice ministries, demanding Zidan's resignation and that "revolutionaries" be given posts in key ministries.
In March, militias demanding a purge of Gaddafi-era officials stormed the general national congress, gunfire striking the car of the former speaker Mohammed Magariaf.
Anger at the power of militias is acute in Benghazi. After an Islamist militia was blamed for the killing of the US ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans last September, protestors stormed a series of militia bases.
But the militias were allowed to remain in place by the government, in return for coming under army jurisdiction.
This arrangement will now come under intense scrutiny following Saturday's events, the worst single-day death toll since the end of the civil war in 2011.
Zidan's problem is that the government's own security forces are too feeble to impose order, relying on militia forces for security in many parts of the country
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