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Suicide bomber kills 7 in Libya

A suicide bomber detonated a truck packed with explosives at an army checkpoint outside the city of Benghazi on Sunday, killing seven soldiers in the first such attack in Libya’s deepening turmoil.

Car bombs and assassinations of army and police officers are common in Benghazi, where troops have clashed regularly with militants from the hardline Islamist group Ansar Al Sharia. But a suicide bombing would mark a shift in tactics to fit a pattern common in other Islamist struggles in the Middle East, but not in Libya either during or since the uprising that brought down Muammar Gaddafi. The attacker blew himself up in front of the military base in Barsis, some 50km outside Benghazi.

“A Toyota truck approached the checkpoint and parked there. There was a young man driving, but when the army troops went to check it out, the vehicle exploded,” said Aymen Al Abdlay, a Benghazi army officer. No group claimed responsibility for the attack.

But Ansar Al Sharia last month fought with soldiers who drove Islamists from Benghazi, where growing violence has further increased concerns at a wider descent into disorder in oil-producing Libya. All those killed in the attack on Sunday were soldiers, medical sources and security sources said.

Ansar Al Sharia in Libya, an affiliation of Islamist and ultraconversative Salafist groups, has been blamed for the attack on the US consulate in Benghazi in September 2012 when the US ambassador and three other Americans were killed. An American school teacher was shot and killed by gunmen earlier this month while he exercised in the city. Most countries have closed their consulates in Benghazi and some foreign airlines have stopped flying there.

Western diplomats worry that the violence in Benghazi will spill over to the capital Tripoli which last month saw the worst fighting in months between militias.

Much of Libya’s oil wealth is located in the east where many demand autonomy from the Tripoli government. Protesters in the east took over key ports, blockading much of the North African country’s oil exports for months.The government of Prime Minister Ali Zeidan is struggling to control militias which helped topple Gaddafi.