Tripoli Erupts: Power Struggles and Civilian Impact in Libya’s Fragmented Capital

Tripoli is once again in the crosshairs of conflict. A sudden wave of violence swept through the Libyan capital in May 2025 after the killing of a powerful militia commander, disrupting daily life and plunging neighborhoods into darkness, both figuratively and literally. For the city’s residents, power cuts, street battles, and checkpoints are the symptoms of a deeper struggle: a capital city where armed groups, not institutions, set the rules.

The clashes offer a grim reminder that Libya’s decade-long crisis has entered a new phase. Far from post-conflict stabilization, Tripoli operates under the precarious balance of irregular forces, temporary alliances, and contested sovereignty. This article explores the events of the latest clashes, their civilian cost, and what they reveal about the enduring dynamics of urban irregular warfare.

The Trigger: Assassination and Aftermath

On the evening of May 12, 2025, Abdel Ghani al-Kikli—widely known as “Ghaniwa”—was killed at Tekbali military base in Tripoli. Al-Kikli was the commander of the Stability Support Apparatus (SSA), one of the capital’s most powerful militia formations, formally aligned with Libya’s Presidential Council. He was reportedly shot at close range during a meeting convened to de-escalate mounting tensions among western Libyan armed factions. Guards from the rival 444th Infantry Brigade, a unit loyal to Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Dbeibeh’s Government of National Unity (GNU), exchanged fire outside the gathering, and al-Kikli and several escorts were killed in the ensuing confrontation.

By dawn, the city had changed. SSA fighters activated their support base across the densely populated Souq al-Jumaa district and sought reinforcements from factions in Zawiya, Tajoura, and Amazigh communities—groups that had been increasingly marginalized by Dbeibeh’s consolidation of power. Military convoys from Misrata’s Joint Force and Zintan-based units loyal to Interior Minister Imed Trabelsi moved toward Tripoli. Flights at Mitiga International Airport were suspended, schools were cancelled, and gunfire erupted across several districts including Abu Salim and Salah Eddin.

What the GNU initially portrayed as a strategic operation to restore state authority quickly spiraled into a multi-front confrontation between rival factions, each seeking to capitalize on or resist Dbeibeh’s bid to dismantle Tripoli’s militia architecture.

Fragmented Authority: The Militia Patchwork

Tripoli’s so-called “security architecture” is not defined by state institutions, but by an uneasy coalition of armed groups. Since the collapse of Muammar Gaddafi’s regime in 2011, successive governments have relied on militias to secure the capital. In return, these groups have gained autonomy, territory, and access to state funds.

The GNU claims to control these forces under formal mandates. In reality, they operate like decentralized fiefdoms, conducting arrests, running checkpoints, and even managing prisons without central oversight. This lack of unity transforms political grievances into kinetic confrontations, often leaving civilians caught in the middle.

Civilian Impact: Infrastructure and Humanitarian Consequences

As the fighting intensified, ordinary Tripolitanians bore the brunt. Several substations were sabotaged or caught in crossfire, triggering citywide blackouts. Internet service became unreliable, further isolating residents in conflict zones. In areas like Abu Salim and Souq al-Jumaa, families reported staying indoors for 72 hours straight, rationing food and water as clashes moved through their neighborhoods.

Hospitals, already under-resourced, began receiving casualties from stray bullets and mortar fragments. UNSMIL described the situation as “deeply alarming,” calling out the use of heavy weaponry in densely populated civilian areas. The GNU Interior Ministry processed at least 69 claims of damage to civilian property by May 18, and the Emergency Medicine and Support Center confirmed six bodies recovered from Abu Salim streets alone—without clarifying whether they were civilians or fighters.

This disruption wasn’t incidental; it was tactical. Militias frequently target critical infrastructure to paralyze rival areas and exert political pressure. Control of power grids, fuel depots, and transit chokepoints is as strategic as holding ground.

Patterns of Irregular Warfare in Urban Conflict Zones

What happened in Tripoli mirrors a broader trend in irregular warfare: the weaponization of civilian terrain. Militia forces operate in and around dense urban environments, using apartment blocks as staging areas, hospitals as rally points, and public utilities as leverage.

Key characteristics of this model:

• Asymmetry: Militia units deploy mobile teams using technicals (armed pickup trucks), drones, and encrypted communications to outmaneuver rivals.
• Denial-of-service tactics: By cutting electricity or blocking roads, militias reduce the operational capacity of enemy factions.
• Narrative warfare: Control of media and social networks is critical. Each faction seeks to dominate the information space, portraying themselves as defenders of stability while accusing opponents of terrorism or betrayal.

Similar dynamics have played out in other contested cities: Baghdad (2005–2009), where sectarian militias used water and power shutdowns to cleanse neighborhoods; Aleppo (2014–2016), where Syrian regime forces and rebel groups engaged in siege warfare and infrastructure sabotage; and Donetsk (2022–2023), where separatist groups and Russian units used public service control as a weapon of compliance. Tripoli is now part of that lineage—a city contested not just by force of arms, but by the denial of normal life.

Political Consequences: GNU Under Pressure

For the Government of National Unity, these events proved deeply destabilizing. Dbeibeh initially framed the operation as a decisive assertion of state authority, issuing executive decrees that dissolved the Directorate for Combating Illegal Migration, established an inspection committee for detention centers, and appointed a new head of the Tripoli Internal Security Agency. On May 13, the GNU also formally accepted International Criminal Court jurisdiction over crimes committed in Libya from 2011 to 2027—a move welcomed internationally but viewed domestically as a political maneuver to legitimize the crackdown.

The backlash was swift. The Presidential Council froze decisions it deemed “of a military or security nature.” Several cabinet ministers resigned in protest, including the deputy prime minister and the ministers of economy, local government, and housing. By May 14, widespread anti-government protests erupted in Tripoli and Zawiya, with demonstrators demanding Dbeibeh’s resignation, the dissolution of all armed militias, and meaningful UN intervention. GNU-affiliated security forces responded by firing live ammunition at protesters in Martyrs’ Square—further eroding whatever legitimacy the government claimed to have gained.

Meanwhile, eastern-based rival government authorities in Benghazi, backed by Khalifa Haftar’s Libyan Arab Armed Forces (LAAF), used the chaos in Tripoli as a propaganda tool, offering “security and unity” in contrast to the capital’s lawlessness.

What Came Next—and What Lies Ahead

A ceasefire brokered by UNSMIL and the Libyan Presidential Council took hold on May 14, with a truce committee chaired by Chief of General Staff Mohamed Al-Haddad overseeing implementation. But the underlying dynamics remained unresolved. By September 2025, Dbeibeh escalated his campaign against another powerful militia—the RADA Special Deterrence Force—ordering loyalist forces from Misrata and Gharyan to advance on Mitiga Airport, where RADA controlled both the airfield and a prison holding al-Qaeda and ISIS detainees. Turkish forces stationed at Mitiga refused to withdraw, signaling Ankara’s unwillingness to let Dbeibeh dismantle the irregular forces that had helped repel Haftar’s 2019 offensive.

The accountability front also shifted. In December 2025, German authorities surrendered Khaled El Hishri, a senior RADA member, to the ICC on charges of crimes against humanity and war crimes linked to abuses at Mitiga Prison. The ICC’s investigation phase is expected to conclude by early 2026, and the court has confirmed that additional arrest warrants are being pursued. Yet the GNU and the LAAF both continue to refuse to surrender Libyan nationals wanted by the ICC—including Osama Elmasry Njeem, whose arrest by Italian authorities and controversial return to Libya in January 2025 underscored the gap between international legal frameworks and Libyan realities.

The most dangerous trajectory remains a renewed east-west escalation that extends beyond Tripoli into Misrata, Zawiya, and the oil crescent. If militia warfare reactivates across Libya’s central corridor, the entire country could spiral into a multi-front civil war once again.

Resistance in the Shadows: Non-Military Responses

While much of the attention focuses on gunmen and drones, resistance in Tripoli is also occurring off the battlefield.

Civil society groups mobilized to provide medical aid, power banks, and transport for families fleeing hotspots. Youth networks use encrypted apps to report militia movements and avoid ambushes. Independent journalists and bloggers documented abuses and mapped affected areas using open-source tools. The protests that erupted on May 14 and again on May 24—with demonstrators calling for the dissolution of all armed groups and the departure of all existing political bodies—represented a rare moment of unified civilian defiance against the entire militia-political establishment.

These networks are fragile, but vital. In the absence of reliable institutions, Tripoli’s civilians are learning to resist not just their oppressors, but the normalization of chaos. The future of Libyan governance may well depend on the resilience of these underground systems.

Conclusion

The May 2025 clashes in Tripoli are more than another chapter in Libya’s ongoing conflict; they are a mirror of the global struggle over sovereignty in the age of fragmented power. What happens when governments outsource control to irregular actors? How do populations adapt to violence as routine? And what does resistance look like when both state and anti-state forces fail to protect the public?

Tripoli remains a city suspended between revolution and ruin. But even in the dark, its people continue to endure—and resist.

Recommended Reading

• The Burning Shores: Inside the Battle for the New Libya – Frederic Wehrey — The definitive account of post-Gaddafi Libya’s descent into militia warfare, based on extensive fieldwork in Tripoli and Benghazi.
• Invisible Armies: An Epic History of Guerrilla Warfare – Max Boot — A sweeping history of irregular warfare from antiquity to the present, providing essential context for understanding non-state armed groups like Libya’s militias.
• Masters of Resistance (Distillery Press, Series 1) — Lawrence, Mao, Guevara — three foundational texts on insurgency and resistance doctrine in one volume.

For expanded definitions of the terms used in this article, see the IW & Resistance Glossary. For more on how irregular actors exploit urban terrain, see Influence in Irregular Warfare.