Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Friday confirmed Pro-Turkish Syrian fighters are fighting against forces loyal to eastern military commander Khalifa Haftar in Libya alongside training teams dispatched by Ankara, reported Al Jazeera.
“Turkey is there with a training force. There are also people from the Syrian National Army,” Erdogan told reporters in Istanbul.
The statement came after Erdogan recently met Fayez al Sarraj, head of Libya’s U.N.-recognized Government of National Accord (GNA). The closed-door meeting was held in the Presidential Office in Istanbul’s Besiktas district.
Haftar began attacks in April last year to get control of the Libya capital, Tripoli, from the UN-backed government GNA. More than 1,000 people have lost their lives in the violence.
Haftar’s LNA is mainly backed by the United Arab Emirates, France, Russia, and Egypt, while the GNA’s main supporter is Turkey.
Last month, the warring sides agreed on a ceasefire in January in response to a joint call by Turkey and Russia, but the ceasefire has been violated quite a number of times. On Tuesday, the GNA claimed Haftar’s forces have killed three civilians and injured five in two missile attacks on Tripoli’s port.
After the attack, the GNA representatives opted out of the peace negotiations in Geneva, but later on, the United Nations Support Mission on Thursday confirmed that the peace talks between the warring have resumed.
Meanwhile, on Friday, Haftar said his conditions for a ceasefire were the withdrawal of Syria and Turkish mercenaries from Libya and stopping supplies of weapons by Turkey to Tripoli and the liquidation of terrorist groups.
“A ceasefire [would be] the result of a number of conditions being fulfilled … the withdrawal of Syrian and Turkish mercenaries, an end to Turkish arms supplies to Tripoli, and the liquidation of terrorist groups [in Tripoli],” Haftar said.
Haftar, however, warned that he might use his forces if his conditions for a ceasefire were not met.
