This article is more than 5 years old

This article is more than 5 years old

Gunmen tried to assassinate Libya’s internationally-recognised prime minister on his way to the airport in the eastern city of Tobruk on Tuesday.

Abdullah al-Thinni told pan-Arab news channel al-Arabiya that after he left parliament in Tobruk and drove off, gunmen in several cars followed his entourage and opened fire.

“We were surprised by a lot of bullets … Thank God, we managed to escape,” Thinni said, adding that one bodyguard had been wounded.

He did not elaborate but his cabinet said in a statement the gunmen had been “paid criminals” who had previously tried to storm parliament.

Arish Said, head of the government’s media department, said armed men who had been protesting outside a session of the Tobruk government’s house of representatives tried to storm the building before the attack on Thinni, firing shots and demanding the prime minister be removed from office.

War in Libya - the Guardian briefing Read more

They were “threatening to kill the prime minister and force the house to sack him,” Said said. He identified the men as being funded by “corrupted political financiers” linked to powerful Tobruk tribal leaders, without elaborating.

Nearly four years after the ousting of Muammar Gaddafi, Libya is consumed by civil war. The country is split between an elected parliament and weak government, and a rival government and parliament in Tripoli set up by the Islamist-linked militias who took control of the capital, forcing the government to relocate to the far eastern cities of Tobruk and Bayda.

The turmoil has enabled the rise of an active Islamic State branch, which now controls at least two cities along the country’s coastline.

Earlier on Tuesday, Human Rights Watch said civilians, including foreign nationals, were trapped in several neighbourhoods in Libya’s eastern city of Benghazi, urging fighters there to let them leave.

In a statement, the US-based group says militias and army units surrounded the downtown areas, where several hundred people were reportedly trapped and not allowed to leave. Some of those trapped are thought to be Syrians and Palestinians.

Middle East and North Africa director Sarah Leah Whitson said that all forces involved must take all feasible precautions to minimise harm to civilians and civilian property and that the Libyan army and militias must allow civilians safe passage and facilitate access to badly needed aid.