Mediation allowed an agreement to be reached yesterday Saturday to end the clashes between two armed groups in a suburb of the capital Libyaa source in the internationally recognized government told AFP.

The hostilities broke out yesterday afternoon Friday and continued for several hours yesterday Saturday in Tajoura, a community about 20 kilometers east of Tripoli.

Nine people and dozens of others were injured yesterday, according to a statement from the Libyan capital’s emergency center.

“The fighting stopped thanks to an agreement and the mediation of other armed organizations,” a source in the Interior Ministry of the Government of National Unity (GNU), based in Tripoli, told AFP.

A military force under the general staff and the Ministry of Defense in Tripoli intervened to stop the fighting. The mediation between the two sides, both of which are close to the KEE, was accepted, according to the same source.

The UN mission in Libya (MANUL in French, UNSMIL in English) “condemned the armed clashes” and “the concentration of military forces around Tripoli”, stressing its “concern” over the deaths in a statement.

He condemned the use of “heavy weapons and rockets in densely populated areas”, reminding “all parties of their obligation to protect civilians at all times”.

The UN mission also called on armed groups to “take responsibility by ending armed conflicts, restoring calm in populated areas” and called for “accountability of those responsible” for the fighting.

Based on the agreement between the sides, the fighters of the Rabat al-Durou and Suhanda Sabriya brigades are withdrawn from the sectors they occupied on Friday, so that a third armed group can deploy forces between them.

Yesterday Saturday, the immediate aid center emphasized that it hastily removed 72 families from the battle zone.

For its part, the University of Tripoli, a short distance from the business district, announced yesterday that classes are being suspended “as a precaution”.

The government in Tripoli has not officially commented on the outbreak of conflict at this stage.

Libya has been torn apart by violence since the collapse of the regime of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi in 2011 and has two governments, one in its western part, under Prime Minister Abdelhamid Dbayba, recognized by the UN, the other in the eastern part of the country, adjacent to the camp of marshal Khalifa Haftar, who controls, beyond Cyrenaica, sectors of the south.

Despite a return to relative calm in recent years, hostilities erupt sporadically between the myriad armed groups operating in the country, particularly in and around Tripoli.

Yesterday’s clashes coincided with movements by Marshal Haftar’s troops in the south of the country, which brought the specter of civil war back to the fore, four years after a ceasefire agreement was reached. The UN mission in Libya called for a “de-escalation” and to “avoid further tensions”.