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State of Libya

/ Libya /

Libya (Arabic: Lby, Berber: Libya), officially the State of Libya,[5][6] is a country in North Africa. It is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to the north, Egypt to the east, Sudan to the southeast, Chad and Niger to the south, and Algeria and Tunisia to the west. It covers an area of almost 1.8million square kilometres (700,000sqmi). It is the 17th largest country in the world.[7]

Libya's borders touch the countries of Egypt, Sudan, Chad, Algeria, Niger, and Tunisia. To its north is the Mediterranean Sea. The capital of Libya is Tripoli, which is a port on the sea. Tripoli has about one million people.[8] Libya covers an area of about 1,760,000km2 (679,540sqmi).

[9]

The highest point in Libya is Bikku Bitti 2,267 m above sea level and the lowest point is Sabkhat Ghuzayyil -47 m at below sea level.[8] Most of the country is flat, with large plains. Because it is so dry, only 1.03% of the land is suitable for farming.[8]

The area around Tripoli is called Tripolitania, and it was the most developed during the Ottoman occupation.

Cyrenaica is an area of the north east coast.[10] It is divided from Tripolitania by the Gulf of Sirte.[11] It was named by the Greeks who built the city of Cirene in 630 BC.[10] The area was where many of the battles of World War II were fought. It includes the cities of Tobruk and Benghazi.[10] Like Tripolitania, Cyrenaica was also governed by Britain after the war.

The Fezzan is an area of desert in south west Libya which the Italians made a part of Tripoli in 1912.[12] After the war this area was governed by France, who wanted to annex to their Empire.

The population of Libya in 2011 was said to be about 6,597,960.[8] This is not a large number for a country that has such a large area, so the population density of Libya is low. This is because much of Libya is in the Sahara Desert. Most people in Libya live in cities on the coast. People from Libya are called Libyans.

Read more from the original source:
Libya - Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

TRIPOLI - The kidnappers of Jordan's ambassador in Tripoli on Tuesday demanded the release of a Libyan who is serving a life prison sentence in Jordan, a security source said.

LONDON - A tanker is due to load 1 million barrels of crude on Tuesday from Libya's reopened Hariga port, its first export shipment since a deal to end months of closures at its main oil terminals, the National Oil Corp. (NOC) said.

TRIPOLI - Libya opened the trial of deposed leader Muammar Gaddafi's sons and dozens of his ex-officials on Monday in a test of its transition to democracy, but it was quickly adjourned as some of the investigations had not been completed.

TRIPOLI - Libyan prosecutors on Monday began the trial of deposed leader Muammar Gaddafi's sons and former regime officials in a major test for the North African state's transition to a democracy.

TRIPOLI - Saadi Gaddafi and Saif al-Islam, two of deposed Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi's sons, are expected to appear in court on Monday, facing charges of corruption and war crimes alongside more than 30 other Gaddafi-era officials.

TRIPOLI - Libya's interim prime minister handed his resignation to parliament on Sunday, just one month into the job, saying gunmen had tried to attack his family.

TRIPOLI - Libyan Interim Prime Minister Abdullah al-Thinni handed his resignation to parliament on Sunday after less than two weeks in the post, saying gunmen had tried to attack his family.

TRIPOLI, Lebanon - For two weeks now, the rifles have been silent along Syria Street in Lebanon's Tripoli, an area shot up so often that even memorial posters of men killed just a few months ago are speckled with bullet holes.

TRIPOLI - Libya's bid to resume normal oil exports after blockades at eastern ports that have lasted months stumbled on Friday when the oil terminal and refinery at Zawiya in the west were closed by fresh protests.

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Libya | Reuters - Business & Financial News, Breaking US ...

TRIPOLI, Libya Dragging deeply on a cigarette and swirling his espresso dregs, the curly-haired young militiaman offered up a vivid account of the battles he and fellow rebels waged to bring down dictator Moammar Kadafi days of blazing bombardment, thirsty desert nights.

Then he voiced his dismay at the chokehold those same armed groups now maintain on Libya.

"We fought so hard to make a new country," said the 28-year-old of Libyan extraction who left Britain to join the revolution that swept this North African nation in 2011. "Now it's all about money. Money and guns."

The rebel groups that worked together to oust Kadafi have fragmented into rivalrous factions whose outsized collective power has sapped Libya's oil wealth, turned a nascent government structure to tatters and ushered in a grim cycle of assassinations, abductions and firefights in the streets.

International attention tends to focus on the most audacious acts of militias, such as the abduction in October of the prime minister, the storming of various government ministries and last month's bid to illicitly sell $36 million worth of oil. The tanker used by the militia was intercepted by U.S. Navy SEALs and handed over to the Libyan government.

But it is their cumulative daily actions that have cemented the grip of armed factions. With control of nearly all the country's major military and industrial installations, observers say, the groups engage in arms smuggling on an epic scale, extort staggering protection payments from businesses and regularly engage in turf wars that send scrambling anyone unlucky enough to be in the vicinity when the shooting starts.

The main armed factions number in the dozens but splinter groups run to the hundreds, holding sway over economic, political and social life. Their encampments dot the capital. Weaponry is on brazen display in a central Tripoli marketplace. Behind one luxury hotel, truck-mounted antiaircraft guns line a vacant lot like taxi touts hustling for fares.

Some of the groups have been nominally integrated into the weak central government, their allegiance proffered in the manner of a gangland offer that can't be refused. Drawing government pay but answering to their own commanders, the militias in effect control oil fields and hospitals, ports and prisons and even Tripoli's international airport, the main gateway to the outside world.

A powerful militia from Zintan recently commandeered a planeload of weapons intended for Libya's military, a government official said, an account confirmed by several others with knowledge of the incident. The Zintanis, they said, brought trucks onto the tarmac of the Tripoli airport, offloaded the arms and drove away.

"They do whatever they please, and their guns speak for them," said the middle-aged bureaucrat whose government job at the airport forces him to work alongside members of the militia from Zintan, a major town in Libya's western mountains. "Whatever they want, they will get."

Excerpt from:
Libya remains in the grip of rivalrous rebel factions