TRIPOLI: The United Nations said Thursday it will broker new talks between rival institutions from war-torn Libya next week to try to break a deadlock on the rules for long-awaited elections.

“(Parliament speaker) Aguila Saleh and President of the High Council of State Khaled Al-Mishri have accepted my invitation to meet at the UN Office at Geneva 28-29 June to discuss the draft constitutional framework for elections,” the UN’s top Libya official Stephanie Williams tweeted.

TUNIS: Tunisian police on Thursday arrested former prime minister Hamadi Jebali, an ex-senior figure in the Ennahdha party which is the nemesis of current President Kais Saied, Jebali’s lawyer said.
He could not say why Jebali was detained.
“The police arrested Mr.Jebali in his car in Soussa, then took him to Tunis,” Zied Taher said.
For more than a month, Jebali has been under investigation over activities at his boiler factory in Soussa, a coastal city south of the capital, Taher said.

RAMALLAH: Fourteen Palestinian security force members on trial over the killing of prominent activist Nizar Banat, whose death sparked rare protests against the Palestinian Authority, have been released on bail, multiple sources said on Wednesday.

The group formally asked for their release on Tuesday, which was granted by the prosecution on condition that they attend their court hearings.

The risk of coronavirus spreading in the West Bank prison where they were held was cited as grounds for their release.

RAHAT: Israeli archaeologists on Wednesday unveiled a rare ancient mosque in the country’s south that the antiquities officials said sheds light on the region’s transition from Christianity to Islam.

The remains of the mosque, believed to be more than 1,200 years old, were discovered during works to build a new neighborhood in the Bedouin city of Rahat, the Israel Antiquities Authority said in a statement.

TRIPOLI: A sudden shootout between factions in the Libyan capital this month provided a vivid demonstration of how a political stalemate could trigger fighting between rival groups and end two years of comparative peace.

Much of Libya has for years been dominated by armed forces that control territory and vie for position while formally acting as paid elements of state security, their presence strikingly apparent during a recent Reuters visit.