The militia group was reportedly unsatisfied with the recent political appointees and demanded that authorities remove Najla Mangoush as the country's Foreign Minister. Libya's new Presidency Council denied that groups who entered a hotel where the body meets had been armed or used force on Saturday.
Unverified images on social media showed armed, uniformed men standing at the entrance to the Corinthia Hotel.Local press labelled them militias.
Earlier, the Council's spokeswoman had said armed groups had stormed the Corinthia Hotel on Friday. However, she also said nobody from the body had been in the building at the time.
"There was no kidnapping, gunfire, or an attack on me or the hotel," the head of the Presidency Council's office, Mohamed al-Mabrouk, said in a social media video, adding that he had been in the hotel at the time of the incident.
Armed groups based in western Libya have voiced anger at the Government of National Unity's Foreign Minister, Najla el-Mangoush. In Tripoli, the armed groups that pushed Haftar back from the capital with Turkish support still control the streets. Last week, Foreign Minister Mangoush repeated the call for all foreign fighters to leave while standing next to visiting Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu. Turkey says its military presence in Libya is different from other foreign forces because the previous U.N.-recognised government invited it. It will not withdraw until others do.
In January 2015, the Corinthia Hotel in Tripoli was attacked by men affiliated with the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). The hotel was popular with foreign officials and government workers; it had previously housed the Libyan Prime Minister.
