Libyan demonstrators on Thursday stormed and closed down the bureau of Qatari-owned Al Jazeera news network in the eastern city of Bengahzi, a reporter with the bureau said.
"The demonstrators stormed into the bureau, collected documents and then threw them out," Ahmed Khalifa, a reporter at the broadcaster's Benghazi office, told Anadolu Agency.
He added that he and his colleagues were not able to go into the building to assess the damage caused by the attack.
The bureau's closure comes hard on the heels of the emergence of a leaked recording of an alleged conversation between the former bureau chief Abdel-Azeem Mohamed and two Libyan Islamists, in which the latter asked for arms and weapons from Qatar so that local Islamist militias could stand up against renegade general Khalifa Haftar.
The demonstrators said they decided to attack the bureau over the phone conversation, in which, they said, the former Al Jazeera burea chief and the two Islamist figures "conspired" against their country.
They also accused the Qatari government of offering support to Islamist politician and ex-military leader Abdelhakim Belhadj in return for helping it "spy on Libya."
In the conversation, which was widely circulated on the local social media spehere, two Libyan Islamists have purportedly asked Mohamed, an Iraqi, to notify the Qatari government about their need for money and arms so that they can confront Haftar's forces which engaged in fierce fighting against the Islamist militias in the city recently.
By Moataz al-Majbari
englishnews@aa.com.tr
www.aa.com.tr/en
