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| See also: | Other events of 1997 List of years in Libya | ||||
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| See also: | Other events of 1997 List of years in Libya | ||||
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Libya, officially the State of Libya, is a country in the Maghreb region in North Africa. It is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to the north, Egypt to the east, Sudan to the southeast, Chad to the south, Niger to the southwest, Algeria to the west, and Tunisia to the northwest. Libya comprises three historical regions: Tripolitania, Fezzan, and Cyrenaica. With an area of almost 1.8 million km2 (700,000 sq mi), it is the fourth-largest country in Africa and the Arab world, and the 16th-largest in the world. The country's official religion is Islam, with 96.6% of the Libyan population being Sunni Muslims. The official language of Libya is Arabic, with vernacular Libyan Arabic being spoken most widely. The majority of Libya's population is Arab. The largest city and capital, Tripoli, is located in north-western Libya and contains over a million of Libya's seven million people.
Tripoli is the capital and largest city of Libya, with a population of about 1.18 million people in 2019. It is located in the northwest of Libya on the edge of the desert, on a point of rocky land projecting into the Mediterranean Sea and forming a bay. It includes the port of Tripoli and the country's largest commercial and manufacturing center. It is also the site of the University of Tripoli. The vast Bab al-Azizia barracks, which includes the former family estate of Muammar Gaddafi, is also located in the city. Colonel Gaddafi largely ruled the country from his residence in this barracks.
Muammar Muhammad Abu Minyar al-Gaddafi was a Libyan revolutionary, politician and political theorist who ruled Libya from 1969 until his assassination in 2011 by rebel forces. He first served as Revolutionary Chairman of the Libyan Arab Republic from 1969 to 1977 and then as the Brotherly Leader of the Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya from 1977 to 2011. Initially ideologically committed to Arab nationalism and Arab socialism, Gaddafi later ruled according to his own Third International Theory.
The national flag of Libya was originally introduced in 1951, following the creation of the Kingdom of Libya. It was designed by Omar Faiek Shennib and approved by King Idris Al Senussi who comprised the UN delegation representing the three regions of Cyrenaica, Fezzan, and Tripolitania at UN unification discussions.
Saif al-Islam Muammar al-Gaddafi is a Libyan political figure. He is the second son of the late Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi and his second wife Safia Farkash. He was a part of his father's inner circle, performing public relations and diplomatic roles on his behalf. He publicly turned down his father's offer of the country's second highest post and held no official government position. According to United States Department of State officials in Tripoli, during his father's reign, he was the second most widely recognized person in Libya, being at times the de facto prime minister, and was mentioned as a possible successor, though he rejected this. An arrest warrant was issued for him on 27 June 2011 by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for charges of crimes against humanity against the Libyan people, for killing and persecuting civilians, under Articles 7(1)(a) and 7(1)(h) of the Rome statute. He denied the charges.
Baghdadi Ali Mahmudi is a Libyan politician who was Secretary of the General People's Committee of Libya from 5 March 2006 to as late as 1 September 2011, when he acknowledged the collapse of the GPCO and the ascendance of the National Transitional Council as a result of the Libyan Civil War. He has a medical degree, specialising in obstetrics and gynecology, and had served as Deputy Prime Minister to Prime Minister Shukri Ghanem since 2003 at the time he was appointed to replace him. He was a part of Gaddafi's inner circle at least prior to his escape in mid-2011. He was arrested in Tunisia for illegal border entry and jailed for six months, although this was later overruled on appeal, however a Tunisian court decided to extradite Mahmoudi to Libya under a request from Libya's Transitional Council.
Pan Am Flight 103 (PA103/PAA103) was a regularly scheduled Pan Am transatlantic flight from Frankfurt to Detroit via a stopover in London and another in New York City. The transatlantic leg of the route was operated by Clipper Maid of the Seas, a Boeing 747-121 registered N739PA. Shortly after 19:00 on 21 December 1988, while the aircraft was in flight over the Scottish town of Lockerbie, it was destroyed by a bomb that had been planted on board, killing all 243 passengers and 16 crew in what became known as the Lockerbie bombing. Large sections of the aircraft crashed in a residential street in Lockerbie, killing 11 residents. With a total of 270 fatalities, it is one of the deadliest terrorist attack in the history of the United Kingdom, as well as its deadliest aviation disaster ever.
Muhammad Ahmad al-Mangoush was General Secretary of the People's Committee in Libya from 29 December 1997 to 1 March 2000.
Prince Idris bin Abdullah al-Senussi is a member of the Libyan Royal family. While Libya's royal family was under house arrest after Muammar Gaddafi overthrew their rule, Prince Idris al-Senussi began working on leading the royal family and uniting Libya, as this role was passed onto him by his late father.
The National Transitional Council (NTC) was a transitional government established in the 2011 Libyan civil war. The rebel forces overthrew the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya of Muammar Gaddafi. The NTC governed Libya for a period of ten months after the end of the war, holding elections to a General National Congress on 7 July 2012, and handing power to the newly elected assembly on 8 August.
Field Marshal Khalifa Belqasim Haftar is a Libyan politician, military officer, and the commander of the Tobruk-based Libyan National Army (LNA). On 2 March 2015, he was appointed commander of the armed forces loyal to the elected legislative body, the Libyan House of Representatives. He also holds US citizenship.
The Libyan National Army or the Libyan National Arab Army is a component of Libya's military forces which were nominally a unified national force under the command of Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar when he was nominated to the role on 2 March 2015 by the House of Representatives, consisting at the time of a ground force, an air force and a navy.
The 2012 Benghazi attack was a coordinated attack against two United States government facilities in Benghazi, Libya, by members of the Islamic militant group Ansar al-Sharia.
The Libyan civil war from 2014 to 2020 was a multilateral civil war in Libya fought between different armed groups, but mainly the House of Representatives (HoR) and the Government of National Accord.
The Libyan House of Representatives (HoR) is the legislature of Libya resulting from the 2014 Libyan parliamentary election, which had an 18% turnout. In late 2014, following the failed coup attempt to take over the capital Tripoli in the context of the Libyan Civil War, the House of Representatives relocated itself to Tobruk in the far east of Libya. Several HoR sessions were held in Tripoli in May 2019 while Tripoli was under armed attack, electing an Interim Speaker for 45 days. Between 2014 and 2021, the House of Representatives supported the Tobruk-based government led by Abdullah al-Thani before supporting the incumbent Government of National Unity led by Abdul Hamid Dbeibeh. In September 2021, the House of Representatives passed a no-confidence motion against the interim GNU government.
In October 2014, the self-declared Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) took control of numerous government buildings, security vehicles and local landmarks in the Eastern Libyan coastal city of Derna. Although some media outlets reported the control as being absolute, rival groups like the al-Qaeda-affiliated Abu Salim Martyrs Brigade continued to control parts of the city. Clashes erupted between ISIL and an alliance of Islamist groups in June 2015, with ISIL retreating from Derna to outlying suburbs the following month. However, clashes continued between the Islamist alliance and the Tobruk-based government forces.
The Islamic State is a militant Islamist group active in Libya under three branches: Fezzan Province in the desert south, Cyrenaica Province in the east, and Tripolitania Province in the west. The branches were formed on 13 November 2014, following pledges of allegiance to IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi by militants in Libya.
Wissam Najm Abd Zayd al-Zubaydi, better known by his noms de guerre Abu Nabil al-Anbari, Abul Mughirah al-Qahtani or Abu Yazan al-Humairi was a commander in the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and the leader of its Libyan branch. Al-Anbari was killed by a US military airstrike on 13 November 2015.
The Government of National Accord was an interim government for Libya that was formed under the terms of the Libyan Political Agreement, a United Nations–led initiative, signed on 17 December 2015. The agreement was unanimously endorsed by the United Nations Security Council, which welcomed the formation of a Presidency Council for Libya and recognized the Government of National Accord as the sole legitimate executive authority in Libya. On 31 December 2015, Chairman of the Libyan House of Representatives, Aguila Saleh Issa declared his support for the Libyan Political Agreement. The General National Congress has criticized the GNA on multiple fronts as biased in favor of its rival parliament the House of Representatives.
The Libyan presidential election had originally been planned for 10 December 2018, but was delayed due to Khalifa Haftar's Western Libya campaign. The election was thereafter scheduled to be held on 24 December 2021 but was indefinitely postponed after the head of the High National Election Commission (HNEC) ordered the dissolution of the electoral committees nationwide.
