Three Libyan soldiers aligned with eastern warlord Khalifa Haftar were killed and several others captured in coordinated attacks on military positions near the Niger border, according to AFP. Haftar’s self-styled Libyan National Army (LNA) said the assaults, launched in the early hours of Saturday, January 31, targeted three separate posts in the remote south: the Al-Tum (Wadi al-Tum) border crossing with Niger, the Wadi Aboughrara checkpoint, and an outpost near the Salvador Pass, a strategic corridor linking Libya, Niger, and Algeria.
In a statement, the LNA denounced what it called a “cowardly attack” carried out by “mercenary groups and outlaw terrorist gangs,” saying three of its soldiers were killed, others wounded, and an unspecified number taken prisoner before the assailants withdrew toward Niger. Haftar’s command vowed to “liberate” the captured men and announced the deployment of reinforcements to Fezzan, the sparsely governed southern region where rival armed groups, smugglers, and cross-border networks routinely test the limits of state control.
Videos circulated on social media over the weekend show armed men in military fatigues claiming to be “fighters and revolutionaries of the South” asserting they had seized the Al-Tum crossing. In the footage and accompanying statements, the group denounces dire living conditions, chronic fuel shortages, and the absence of basic services, accusing Haftar’s forces of “plundering” the south’s resources while treating local communities as a disposable buffer on the front line of Libya’s security crises.
Local and regional reporting has linked the attackers to Tebu-led formations and other southern networks that operate across Libya, Niger, and Chad, highlighting how ethnic, tribal, and economic grievances intersect with smuggling and armed mobilization. Commanders associated with these factions have framed their operations as attempts to “correct the course” of Libya’s 2011 revolution and push Haftar’s units out of Fezzan, while Haftar’s camp portrays them as criminal gangs and foreign-sponsored mercenaries undermining border security.
The Salvador Pass area, already notorious as a transit corridor for arms, drugs, and migrants across the central Sahara, sits at the heart of this tug-of-war. Every new clash around Al-Tum or the Salvador corridor risks spilling instability deeper into Niger and Algeria, complicating already fraught efforts to contain jihadist threats and smuggling networks in the wider Sahel.
Since the 2011 overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi, Libya has struggled to reestablish a unified security apparatus or coherent border management policy. The country remains divided between a UN-recognized Government of National Unity in Tripoli and an eastern-based administration backed by Haftar, whose forces claim control over most of the east and large swaths of the south. In practice, however, southern Libya has become a patchwork of semi-autonomous actors, where nominal allegiances to national figures mask local power struggles and a war economy built on smuggling, informal taxation, and protection rackets.
The latest attacks show how fragile Haftar’s grip on the south remains, despite repeated announcements of “stabilization” and high-profile deployments of loyal brigades. With armed groups able to briefly overrun border posts, kill soldiers, and withdraw into the desert or across the frontier, southern Libya continues to function as a corridor of shared instability, one where Libya’s unresolved political split, the crisis in Niger, and the wider Sahelian conflict all converge.
