TRIPOLI, Libya — An affiliate of the Islamic State claimed responsibility for an armed assault on a luxury hotel that killed as many as five people here on Tuesday, the most significant in a string of terrorist attacks against Western interests and government institutions in the capital since the ouster of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi more than three years ago.
Four or five gunmen stormed the hotel, the Corinthia, in the early morning, firing their guns into the lobby, battling guards, and shooting a Filipino woman and possibly other civilians, according to news reports and people in contact with associates inside the hotel.
Fighters wearing black uniforms labeled “police†and loyal to the Tripoli government — one of two rival governments now fighting for control of Libya — responded to the attack, cordoning off streets and surrounding the hotel. Their forces entered a long standoff with assailants still inside.
A car exploded in the hotel parking lot, although it was unclear whether the cause was a car bomb, a rocket-propelled grenade, or some kind of missile.
The hotel, one of the most luxurious in Tripoli, is a central hub for foreign tourists and businessmen visiting Libya, and it also houses the offices of several foreign embassies. But most foreigners have fled as the country has descended into chaos and armed conflict since last summer. Libyans who do business in the hotel said it was largely empty when the attack began.
An unnamed hotel employee told The Associated Press that guests, including British, Italian and Turkish visitors, had fled out the back of the hotel as the attackers entered the lobby. There were initial reports that some of the attackers had taken hostages, but by midday, security officials interviewed on Libyan television said that there were no hostages and that at least two of the attackers had been killed.
A group calling itself the Tripoli Province of the Islamic State, the extremist group that has seized territory in Syria and Iraq, issued a statement on social media claiming responsibility for the attack just as it was beginning. The group portrayed the assault as retaliation for the abduction last year by American commandos of a Libyan Qaeda operative, Nazih Abdul-Hamed al-Ruqai, also known as Abu Anas al-Libi.
Mr. Ruqai, 50, died this month in a New York hospital of complications from liver surgery as he was waiting to stand trial for a role in Qaeda bombings of the American Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998.
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