CAIRO (The New York Times) — The French Embassy in Libya was struck by what was reported to be a car bomb on Tuesday, injuring two French guards, according Libyan media accounts and French authorities who called the attack “odious.”The assault was described as the first of its kind in the Libyan capital since the revolt beginning in 2011 that toppled Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, but it was not the first attack on a diplomatic building in Libya.
Last September in the eastern city of Benghazi, militants struck at two American facilities, killing the American ambassador, J. Christopher Stevens, and three other Americans. Last month, Libyan security officials said they had arrested two men in the kidnapping near Benghazi of five British humanitarian activists, at least two of them women who had been sexually assaulted.
On Tuesday, Reuters quoted residents living near the French diplomatic compound in Tripoli, the Libyan capital, as saying they heard two explosions in the early morning.
“We think it was a booby trapped car,” a French Embassy official told Reuters. “There was a lot of damage and there are two guards wounded.”
The attack raised worries among Tripoli residents that the security situation there was unraveling further.
Since the fall of Colonel Qaddafi, Tripoli had generally been seen as safer than Benghazi, which many foreigners avoid. But the country as a whole is viewed by outsiders as potentially perilous with many weapons in the hands of citizens and militias beyond government control. Many foreigners in Tripoli take elaborate security precautions.
The French foreign minister, Laurent Fabius, was quick to issue a statement in Paris calling Tuesday’s attack odious. Mr. Fabius said he condemned the attack with the utmost vigor and said French and Libyan authorities would make every effort to shed light on the circumstances surrounding the attack.
The assault came a day after the French Parliament voted to extend the French military deployment in Mali, but there was no indication whether the attack was linked to that development. No group immediately took responsibility for the blast.
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CITY – A group of “people with their faces covered” occupied the office of the
president of the National Autonomous University of Mexico, or UNAM, over the
weekend to protest the expulsion of five students and make several other
demands, officials of the Mexico City-based university said.
