A fresh round of Zawiya drone attacks has left large parts of the western Libyan city without electricity, barely two days after fires tore through fuel storage tanks at the country’s biggest operating refinery in the same area.
The state-run General Electricity Company of Libya, known as GECOL, said in a statement on Wednesday that a drone strike had set the South Zawiya substation ablaze, burning it down completely. The facility links power plants in the area to homes and businesses.
Substation destroyed, homes left in the dark
GECOL said the attack caused a total blackout across areas south of Zawiya, a city of roughly 250,000 people situated about 47 kilometres west of Tripoli. Technical crews were forced to pull back from the site because of the security risk, the company added.
Reuters reported that US firm GE, which had been running maintenance work at the Zawiya power station, halted all operations there and withdrew its engineers pending an improvement in security conditions. More than 700 megawatts of the plant’s 1,300 megawatt capacity remained offline as a result, GECOL told the news agency.
No group has claimed responsibility for the Zawiya drone attacks so far, and Libyan authorities have not named any suspects.
Refinery hit again after Monday’s blaze
Wednesday’s power strike came only a day after the nearby Zawiya oil refinery, Libya’s largest still in operation, was targeted for a third time in two days. A drone struck an oil blending and filling plant run by the Zawiya Oil Refining Company on Tuesday, landing near a main storage tank and a pipeline network, according to Al Jazeera. No casualties or physical damage were reported from that particular strike.
The more serious fire had broken out on Monday evening, when a drone hit tank 402-T, owned by the Brega Oil Company, at the refinery complex. The National Oil Corporation said in a Facebook statement that the tank, which held about 4.5 million litres of petrol, was struck directly and burned before it collapsed. Firefighters battled that blaze for more than fifteen hours.
Two drones also struck the city’s power plant on Tuesday morning. One damaged its firefighting system, while the second came down near the main fuel storage area and started a fire there too, GECOL officials told Reuters.
Government condemns the attacks
Abdul-Hamid Dbeibah, prime minister of one of Libya’s two rival administrations, described the strikes as a serious crime and an escalation that would not go unanswered. He said those responsible would be pursued and held to account, regardless of their position or influence.
Libya has been split between competing governments in Tripoli and the east since 2014, and Zawiya, though nominally under Tripoli’s control, has long been contested ground for armed factions vying for a share of its energy wealth.
Zawiya Drone Attacks Escalate Against Energy Infrastructure
Even before Wednesday’s blackout, the National Oil Corporation had warned it might declare force majeure and shut the Zawiya refinery entirely if the drone campaign continued. The refinery processes 120,000 barrels of oil a day and is linked to the 300,000 barrel-a-day Sharara oilfield, one of Libya’s most important production sites.
Zawiya has been disrupted by armed clashes before, most recently for several days in May, but the current run of Zawiya drone attacks marks one of the most sustained assaults on the city’s energy infrastructure in recent months. Libya holds Africa’s largest proven oil reserves, yet years of factional conflict have repeatedly interrupted output and kept the country’s energy sector on edge.
For now, GECOL says restoring power to southern Zawiya will depend on when its technical teams can safely return to the substation, while the National Oil Corporation continues to monitor the refinery for any further strikes. Analysts say the latest Zawiya drone attacks highlight the vulnerability of Libya’s energy infrastructure amid ongoing political and security divisions.
