Libya's militias given 48 hours to get out

A Libyan general has said that a radical Islamist militia accused of killing the American ambassador is "finished" after concerted attacks on militant bases over the weekend.

The uprising has emboldened the Libyan government to issue a 48-hour deadline for militias not directly under its command to leave bases around Tripoli.

Brigadier General Hamed Belkhair, the commander of the official Benghazi garrison told The Daily Telegraph, that Ansar al-Sharia, the militant group whose members were implicated in storming the US consulate when ambassador Chris Stevens was killed, had been disbanded.

"Its individual members may remain but it is finished as a force, God willing," he said.

Brig Gen Belkhair was speaking shortly after being released from a six-hour kidnap, a reflection of the insecurity that continues to plague Libya since the revolution to topple Colonel Muammar Gaddafi.

He was seized from outside his house in Benghazi on Saturday morning, shortly after his troops had been on the streets protecting crowds of anti-Islamist demonstrators who stormed bases belonging to Ansar al-Sharia and other Islamist groups. He said the masked kidnappers accused him of being "kuffar" or infidel and a "traitor", before receiving a phone call instructing them not to kill him. He was eventually thrown from a car on to a roundabout.

Brig Gen Belkhair said he originally instructed his troops to stay in their barracks on Friday, when a peaceful demonstration had been called to protest against the unchecked power of militias, especially Ansar. But when the crowds late in the evening began to march on the bases of Ansar and other groups he ordered his men to make sure civilians were protected. The decision to protect rather than stop the crowds has caused fury among some Islamist groups which were targeted even though they are notionally allied to the government. Most notably, Rafallah al-Sahati, one of the city's most prominent Islamist battalions, was driven from its base even though it is licensed and notionally answers to the defence ministry.

In the fighting, five people were killed. In addition, the bodies of six soldiers were found in a field nearby, apparently executed with shots to the head, though the circumstances of their deaths remained a mystery. "We hoped that there would be no blood," Brig Gen Belkhair said. But he also added that the interim revolutionary government, the National Transitional Council, had made a mistake in allowing so many militias to form in the first place.

On Sunday Rafallah al-Sahati hit back, announcing it had arrested 115 people including soldiers and civilians it said were involved in the attack on its base. A spokesman told The Daily Telegraph that some of those arrested had links to Col Gaddafi and that they had been handed over to police. State news agencies reported that both Ansar al-Sharia and a smaller militia, the Martyrs of Abu Salim, had announced that they were disbanding in Benghazi and in the town of Derna to the east, known as a hotbed of Islamist militancy.

A militia base in Tripoli was also taken over by state security forces yesterday morning, with some arrests but no casualties. It was said to be occupied by the non-Islamist Zintan brigade and its allies.

Mohammed Magarief, Libya's parliamentary speaker and interim president, was flying to the United States yesterday to attend the United Nations General Assembly. He must reassure President Barack Obama that he can secure Libya from the threat of Islamists, particularly those believed to have links to al-Qaeda, to forestall any threat of American intervention.

He also has to deal with the threat of a violent backlash from well-supported and well-armed Islamist groups that say they have the same aims as the government and legitimacy from their role in the revolution.

Libya's newly elected prime minister, Mustafa Abushagur, is understood to be in negotiations with senior Islamist leaders over the formation of his government.