The killing of one of eastern Libya’s most senior intelligence officers has exposed vulnerabilities at the heart of Khalifa Haftar’s security apparatus, just as international efforts to reunify the country appear to be gaining momentum.
Major General Fawzi al-Mansouri, head of military intelligence for the eastern-based Libyan National Army (LNA), was killed late on Monday, 10 August, when an explosive device attached to his vehicle detonated in Benghazi. He had just left evening prayers at a mosque in the Sayyida Aisha quarter of the al-Hawari district. No one else was killed.
Nearly a week later, no group has claimed responsibility, and no credible evidence has emerged publicly identifying those behind the attack.
Haftar appointed al-Mansouri director of military intelligence on 20 May 2024. Before that, he had spent almost three years commanding the Sabha military zone, a strategically important area in Libya’s southern desert. The region borders Chad, Niger and Sudan and lies at the intersection of smuggling routes, migration corridors and arms-supply networks.
The LNA hailed al-Mansouri as a “heroic martyr”. Its director of moral guidance, Khaled al-Mahjoub, called the bombing “a desperate attempt to undermine the security” of army-controlled territory. He compared it to the wave of assassinations targeting military officers in Benghazi in 2013 and 2014.
Khaled Haftar, the commander’s son and the LNA’s chief of staff, announced that an investigation had been opened. Osama Hammad, the eastern administration’s prime minister, also condemned the attack. Significantly, the rival Government of National Unity in Tripoli did the same, calling on Prosecutor General al-Siddiq al-Sour to launch an urgent inquiry.
The method of the assassination is particularly troubling. Planting a bomb on the vehicle of the official responsible for military intelligence, in the most heavily policed city in eastern Libya, suggests a carefully planned security breach rather than an opportunistic attack.
Analysts at Verisk Maplecroft said the successful targeting of such a senior figure indicated that those responsible possessed considerable operational capability. It also represents a serious reputational setback for a command that has built much of its authority on the claim that eastern Libya is stable and secure.
That claim is especially important at a time when diplomatic efforts to bridge Libya’s political divide are showing signs of progress. Washington’s envoy, Massad Boulos, has spent the past year working on a power-sharing arrangement intended to bring together the country’s parallel administrations, with the Haftar family in the east and Abdul Hamid Dbeibah’s camp in Tripoli as the principal players.
The process has already produced tangible results. A unified national budget for 2026 was signed in April, the first in more than a decade. Forces from the rival camps have participated jointly in exercises led by the United States Africa Command, while the UN-backed 4+4 Joint Military Commission agreed on a new text in July.
Libya specialist Jalel Harchaoui warned that al-Mansouri’s assassination would, at the very least, delay implementation of the agreement.
Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan arrived in Libya the day after the bombing. On 11 August, he met Dbeibah and Presidential Council Chairman Mohamed al-Menfi in Tripoli and visited the Turkish Armed Forces’ Libya Mission Group Command.
The following day, Fidan travelled to Benghazi for his first official visit to the eastern city. Saddam Haftar received him at the airport, before he held talks with Khalifa Haftar, reconstruction fund director Belqasim Haftar and House of Representatives Speaker Aguila Saleh.
Ankara presents this engagement as part of its “One Libya” policy, under which it seeks relations with the country’s western, eastern and southern power centres. The shift is striking. Six years ago, Turkish drones, advisers and military support helped repel Haftar’s offensive against Tripoli. Today, bilateral trade is approaching $3.5 billion a year, while forces aligned with both Libyan camps participated in Türkiye’s EFES 2026 military exercise.
As Benghazi dealt with the assassination, western Libya faced a separate wave of violence. Between 8 and 11 August, first-person-view drones struck the Zawiya refinery complex four times. The attacks damaged a naphtha tank, a desalination unit and a lubricants plant. They also hit a gasoline tank containing 4.5 million litres of fuel, causing it to burn and collapse.
The National Oil Corporation warned that it might declare force majeure at the facility, Libya’s largest operating refinery, with a processing capacity of 120,000 barrels per day. The Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project has recorded more than 30 clashes in Zawiya this year, largely involving militias competing for control of fuel-smuggling revenues.
Libya therefore witnessed two major attacks in opposite parts of the country within a single week. Neither has been claimed, and both struck institutions that any credible unification agreement would depend upon: the security establishment in the east and vital energy infrastructure in the west.
Haftar still holds considerable regional influence. Reuters reported on Thursday that he had helped secure the release of an American hostage held by an Islamic State affiliate in the Sahel. Yet the bomb in al-Hawari has raised a more immediate question—one that Benghazi’s security apparatus has so far been unable to answer: who was capable of reaching the man entrusted with protecting it?