A hostage stand-off is unfolding in the Libyan capital of Tripoli with gunmen holding captives inside a luxury hotel. Guests, mainly from Britain, Italy and Turkey managed to flee when the gunmen burst into the hotel lobby.
Gunmen in Libya’s capital stormed a hotel popular with foreigners Tuesday, killing at least nine people before a standoff that ended when two assailants set off a grenade that left them both dead, news agencies reported.
The attack underscored the deepening unrest across Libya as Islamists militants and other factions tighten their grip on cities and other key sites.
The assault on the seaside Corinthia Hotel struck at one of the few sites in Tripoli considered secure enough to host foreign visitors such as business executives and political envoys.
The full details of the attack were unclear, including the total number of gunmen and whether some escaped. But the strike appeared to have some level of coordination. A car bomb was detonated as guests and staff fled the hotel.
The Associated Press, citing security officials, said four foreigners and five guards were killed. Earlier, officials said the death toll included five foreigners and three guards, but the tally was later revised, the AP said.
Libyan security forces and emergency services surround Tripoli's central Corinthia Hotel on Jan. 27. (Mahmud Turkia/AFP/Getty Images)
No other details were immediately available, including the nationalities of the foreigners reported killed.
After a standoff lasting several hours, two attackers killed themselves by setting off a grenade, the officials said.
The hotel is frequented by journalists, business executives and other international envoys, including officials involved in U.N.-brokered talks with Libya’s rival factions.
Reports about the attack included several conflicting accounts, and it was not immediately possible to reconcile the various details, news agencies reported.
The AP, citing security officials and hotel staff, said five masked attackers wearing bulletproof vests stormed the hotel after security at the gates tried to stop them.
A hotel staff member told the AP that the gunmen entered the hotel and appeared to fire in random directions. As guests and staff fled out the hotel’s back doors, a car bomb exploded about 100 yards away, the AP reported.
Three guards died in the blast, the Reuters news agency reported, citing security officials.
The hotel staff member spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity because he feared retribution.
He said the hotel had Italian, British and Turkish guests, but that it was largely empty at the time of the attack.
It was not immediately clear who staged the attack, but the SITE monitoring service said a militant group claiming links to the Islamic State claimed responsibility.
In a Twitter post, SITE quoted the Islamic State offshoot in Libya as saying the attack was launched in solidarity with a Libyan man suspected of plotting al-Qaeda’s 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
Abu Anas al-Libi, whose real name is Nazih Abdul-Hamed al-Ruqai, died in a New York hospital earlier this month just days before his trial.
Tripoli has been hit with a series of car bombs and shootings in the turmoil that has engulfed the country following its 2011 civil war, which ousted longtime Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi. Two governments and two parliaments are vying for legitimacy in the country from Tripoli and Benghazi in the east.
Tripoli is currently controlled by a group called Libya Dawn, which seized the capital in August by expelling a rival force.
Most recently, a guard was killed in a shootout outside the U.N. headquarters in the city.
Daniela Deane was a reporter in four countries in Europe and Asia and a foreign affairs writer in Washington before she joined the Post. She now writes about breaking foreign news from both London and Rome.
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