Large parts of west and south-western Libya are without water after armed men demanding the release of a former henchman of Muammar Gaddafi threatened to sabotage the water supply.
The authority that runs the Great Man-Made River – which supplies fresh water across the country – said it had suspended its flow to the region as a precaution after gunmen entered its operational centre.
They said they would blow up the main water supply if Abdullah al-Senussi – who was the late Libyan leader’s intelligence chief and brother-in-law – was not freed.
He is in jail in Tripoli and was sentenced to death in 2015, four years after the uprising in which Gaddafi was killed.
The Great Man-Made River has been described as the biggest irrigation project in the world.
It is a vast network of underground pipelines which brings fresh water from aquifers deep in the Sahara Desert to Libya’s coast.
