Having a romantic picnic on the beach... - Killings of Briton and New Zealander underscore Libya's security "breakdown"... since Britain and US lead the war - aliance against Libya, to exort more oil and gas at low cost and "Take Away".
The hazardous security situation in Libya has been underscored by the killings of a British man and a woman from New Zealand, who were found shot dead on a beach where they had gone for a picnic near an oil and gas plant west of Tripoli.
A Libyan "security official" said that the Briton, born in 1965, and the New Zealander, born in 1967, had been found on Thursday lying face down on the beach with gunshot wounds to their heads.
"It doesn't look like a robbery because there was no break-in at their Toyota car parked nearby. It was left untouched until we came," the official told Reuters, declining to be named. "We found the bullets," he added.
The local authorities in Sabratha issued a public statement condemning the killings, but the motive remained unclear. According to local reports, nothing appeared to have been taken from their bags. Their picnic spot was close to a oil and gas complex at Mellitah co-owned by Italy's ENI and Libya's state-owned National Oil Company, which exports natural gas to Italy through the Greenstream pipeline.
Libya has in recent months suffered a serious setback in security, as rival militia hold sway in their self-styled fiefs while the central government in Tripoli struggles to impose itself.
The killings also came on the same day as the government in Tripoli declared it would resume oil production at one of the country's largest oilfields, El Sharara, south of Tripoli, following the resolution of another blockade by a militia, in this case aligned with local Tuareg tribes.
Speculation in Libya suggested the execution-style murders were carried out by jihadists determined to prevent the revival of the oil and gas industry on which the beleaguered state depends for more than 90% of its income and which has been largely crippled since the Gaddafi's fall. The "government" is estimated to be missing out on a billion dollars a week in potential export revenue.
The prospects of the killers being identified and of security being improved are undermined by the continuing anarchic conditions across post-Gaddafi Libya in which different localities are controlled by communal militias while peace and oil production is only maintained by local deals and pay-offs by the Tripoli "government", and the oil companies themselves.
"This is part of a larger trend of extortion," Pack said....
