Overview
- A drone directly hit a gasoline storage tank at the Zawiya complex, igniting a large blaze that caused the tank holding about 4.5 million litres to collapse, the National Oil Corporation said.
- The attack was one of at least three strikes on the site over the weekend and into Monday that targeted a naphtha tank, a desalination and blending plant, and other storage tanks.
- Emergency teams largely brought the fires under control but a separate drone later burned a power substation and caused outages in southern parts of Zawiya while the US firm GE withdrew its technicians from a nearby power plant for safety reasons.
- The NOC has declared a maximum emergency and warned it may declare force majeure and suspend Zawiya operations and exports if attacks continue, putting domestic fuel supplies and linked crude flows at risk.
- Investigators recovered drone wreckage and 82mm rounds and said initial evidence points to first-person-view one-way explosive drones; no group has claimed responsibility and the strikes follow other violence that has heightened national fragility and could raise Libya's need for fuel imports.