A spokesman for east Libyan armed forces said on Friday that as many as 141 people had been killed a day earlier in an attack on a southern air base, and the head of Libya's United Nations-backed government suspended his defense minister pending an investigation into the incident.
The attack at Brak Al-Shati air base shattered a truce in the area, which in recent months had become a flash point between military alliances based in eastern and western Libya.
It risks a major escalation in a stop-start conflict between eastern-based factions and rivals loosely aligned with current and former governments in the capital, Tripoli.