WASHINGTON: The United States has temporarily closed its embassy in Libya and evacuated more than 150 Americans from Tripoli, the State Department said on Saturday.

Other Western nations and the United Nations have already withdrawn their staff from Tripoli. The United States also closed its embassy in February 2011, when rebels toppled Moammar Qadhafi but reopened in September.

“Due to the ongoing violence resulting from clashes between Libyan militias in the immediate vicinity of the US Embassy in Tripoli, we have temporarily relocated all of our personnel out of Libya,” said the department’s spokesperson Marie Harf.

“We are currently exploring options for a permanent return to Tripoli as soon as the security situation on the ground improves,” she said. “We did not make this decision lightly.”

US Secretary of State John Kerry told reporters in France that “the freewheeling militia violence” in Tripoli posed a real risk to embassy personnel and caused the United States and other nations to suspend diplomatic activities.

US security officials told reporters in Washington that 158 Americans, including 80 heavily armed US Marines, left the embassy compound early on Saturday on SUV’s and buses. Two American F-16 fighter jets and unmanned drones provided air protection to the caravan.

They entered neighbouring Tunisia later on Saturday and were already traveling onward from there, Ms Harf said.

“Mortars were flying very near our embassy. We are really caught in the middle here and it wasn’t safe to stay,” a US official told NBC News.

The fighting has largely focused on Tripoli Airport in Tripoli and has destroyed almost 90 per cent of the planes parked there.

At least two American warships, a guided-missile destroyer, the USS Ross and a guided-missile cruiser, the USS Vella Gulf, were nearby in the Mediterranean in case additional military protection was needed, officials told NBC News.

Published in Dawn, July 27th, 2014