This article is more than 6 years old

This article is more than 6 years old

The Libyan capital remained tense on Monday, a day after forces loyal to a renegade general stormed the parliament and said they had suspended the house, challenging the legitimacy of the country's weak government three years after the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi.

Libya's leadership condemned Sunday's brazen attack, in which two people reportedly died and more than 50 were wounded, and vowed to carry on.

In the attack, militia members backed by truck-mounted anti-aircraft guns, mortars and rocket fire raided the parliament building in the heart of Tripoli, sending lawmakers fleeing for their lives as gunmen ransacked the legislature.

A commander in Libya's military police read a statement announcing the suspension of parliament on behalf of a group led by General Khalifa Hifter, a one-time rebel commander who said the US had backed his efforts to topple Gaddafi in the 1990s.

Mokhtar Farnana, speaking on a Libyan television channel on behalf of Hifter's group, said it had assigned a 60-member assembly to take over for parliament. Farnana said Libya's current government would act as an emergency cabinet, but gave no further details.

Farnana, who is in charge of prisons operated by the military police, said forces loyal to Hifter had carried out Sunday's attack. He insisted it was not a coup, but a battle by "the people's choice".

"We announce to the world that the country can't be a breeding ground or an incubator for terrorism," said Farnana, who wore a military uniform and sat in front of Libya's flag.

Libya's interim government condemned the attack on parliament in a statement issued shortly after midnight, and largely ignored the declaration by the general's group.

"The government condemns the expression of political opinion through the use of armed force," the justice minister Salah al-Marghani said. "It calls for an immediate end of the use of the military arsenal … and calls on all sides to resort to dialogue and reconciliation."

Militias that backed the country's interim government manned checkpoints around the capital late on Sunday. Hifter's forces in Tripoli appeared concentrated around the road to the city's airport and its southern outskirts.

By Monday morning, gunfire along the capital's airport highway had died down and a tentative calm had returned to the city.

Authorities seemed determined to convey a message of "business as usual". The ministry of education denied that high school end-of-term exams were suspended, according to the Libyan news agency LANA. The ministry urged students to go to school as normal.

The attack on parliament followed an assault on Friday by Hifter's forces on Islamist militias in the restive eastern city of Benghazi, which authorities said had killed 70 people.

Sunday's attack in Tripoli targeted the Islamist lawmakers and officials Hifter blames for allowing extremists to hold the country to ransom, his spokesman Mohammed al-Hegazi told Libyan television.

"This parliament is what supports these extremist Islamist entities," Hegazi said. "The aim was to arrest these Islamist bodies who wear the cloak of politics."

Libyan officials believe members of the al-Qaaqaa and Sawaaq militias – the largest in Tripoli – backed Hifter, even though they operate under a government mandate.

Since Gaddafi's overthrow, Libya's army and police have relied on the country's myriad of militias, the heavily armed groups formed around ethnic identity, home towns and religion that emerged from the rebel factions that toppled the dictator.

Bringing the militias under control has been one of the greatest challenges for Libya's successive interim governments, one they have largely failed at as militias have seized oil terminals and even kidnapped a former prime minister, seemingly at will.

An official with the Libyan Revolution Operation Room, an umbrella group of militias in charge of security in the capital, said the gunmen in Sunday's attack had kidnapped some 20 lawmakers and government officials. However, the abduction could not immediately be confirmed and LANA made no mention of the officials being seized. The attackers left the parliament building after they ransacked it in the assault.

Libya's legislature is divided between Islamist and non-Islamist factions, with rival militias lining up behind them. Recently, Islamists backed the naming of a new prime minister amid walkouts from non-Islamists, who said the new government would not be legitimate.

It is not clear which militias and political leaders support Hifter, but his offensive reflects a wider disenchantment among Libyans with its virtually powerless government.