Libya risks becoming a failed state like Somalia, Niger President Mahamadou Issoufou said on 6 December, a day after gunmen shot dead an American teacher in the eastern city of Benghazi. “Our fear is that Libya falls into the hands of terrorists and that the state becomes like Somalia,” Issoufou told reporters ahead of a Franco-African summit in Paris. “Sadly, we’re seeing that the terrorists are there and that armed Salafist militia are in Benghazi, with people being killed almost every day. We must stabilise Libya.”
Gunmen shot dead an American teacher working in Benghazi on Thursday. Libya’s fragile government is struggling to contain former fighters and militias who, two years after the fall of Muammar Gaddafi, are challenging a fragile state that is trying to build a national army with Western aid.