Libya’s government regains control of western Libya

FOR OVER a year the UN-backed Government of National Accord (GNA) in Libya had been under siege by the forces of Khalifa Haftar, a renegade general. Then, all of sudden, it wasn’t. On June 3rd militias aligned with the GNA pushed General Haftar’s self-styled Libyan National Army (LNA) out of Tripoli’s international airport. The next day they took back Tarhouna, a city 90km to the south-east (see map). By June 7th the oilfields in Sharara were back in the GNA’s hands—and pumping for the first time since January. The militias are now fighting the LNA in Sirte, the gateway to General Haftar’s heartland in the east. Fight “for the whole of the homeland”, says Fayez al-Serraj, the GNA’s prime minister.