Month: May 2017

The Libyan leader’s short meeting with President Trump yesterday in Riyadh was followed up last night, be it coincidentally, by the attack in Manchester which targeted innocent young victims.  Our deepest sympathy goes out to the bereaved.  We have to ask questions why the Libyan terrorist, born in Manchester, committed such an atrocity.  The radicalization of Libyan young men, some of whom went across to Syria in the Arab Spring, is a disease that requires a new cure.

 

The Libyan National Army is assaulting militant positions in the Suq al-Hut district of Benghazi and a commander in the najdah, a police emergency response unit, was killed yesterday.  There has also been an explosion at an arms dump in the south of the city, reportedly caused by the heat.

In 2011, we completed a project to make Libya safer and prevent the accidental cook-off of unstable ammunition in the Martyrs’ Museum in Misratah.  See page 264 of Belfast to Benghazi for the remnants of war story.

https://www.waterstones.com/book/belfast-to-benghazi/rupert-wieloch/9781861515667

At 8.20 p.m. on 3rd May 1995, a United Nations base in Bosnia was attacked by a T-55 tank for the second time in four days.  Despite suffering many casualties, the British, Canadian and New Zealand troops responded magnificently, protecting the vulnerable civilians and setting the standard for UNPROFOR  Safe Areas.

Just before the genocide in Srebrenica, Daniel McGrory described these soldiers as “Saviours of the Children” when he described the humanitarian work of Corporal Steve Dowsett and other Queen’s Royal Lancers in the Bosnian siege town of Maglaj.

See chapter 3 of Belfast to Benghazi for the story of the defence of Maglaj and subsequent frustrations when Srebrenica fell.

https://www.waterstones.com/book/belfast-to-benghazi/rupert-wieloch/9781861515667