THE EGYPTIAN authorities are closely monitoring investigations of the recent killings of seven Egyptian Christians in Libya with the Libyan authorities. “We expect the Libyan authorities will quickly conduct their investigation into this horrendous crime and provide the Egyptian authorities with the results as soon as possible and hand the perpetrators over to justice,” Egypt's Foreign Ministry spokesman Badr Abdel-Atti, said on Monday. The Foreign Ministry said the killings took place on Sunday evening, when a group of masked men abducted eight people from their homes in Benghazi in eastern Libya. One of the eight managed to escape, but the rest were found shot dead on a beach outside the city. Assassinations, kidnappings and car bombings are common in the area, which is also notorious for Islamist gunmen. The extremist Islamist group Ansar Al-Sharia is active in the east of Libya. Its Benghazi branch is listed as a foreign terrorist organisation by Washington, which blames the group for the 2012 attack on the US consulate in Benghazi. The Foreign Ministry confirmed that the dead men were all Egyptian Christians. It released the names of the dead individuals and said that Egypt's embassy in the Libyan capital Tripoli and consulate in Benghazi were working with the Libyan authorities to finish procedures to transport the bodies to Egypt. The killing of the Egyptians comes a few weeks after the kidnapping of five Egyptian embassy staff in Tripoli, including the cultural attaché and the administrative attaché, by unknown gunmen. Last month, a British man and a New Zealand woman were also shot on a Libyan beach 100 km to the west of Tripoli. The five Egyptian diplomats were freed two days later and subsequently arrived safely in Cairo. Egypt evacuated its remaining diplomats from Libya following the kidnapping. The diplomats were allegedly kidnapped in retaliation for the arrest of Shabaan Hadia, a Libyan militiaman and leader of the Operations Room group. Hadia was released one day after the release of the diplomats, after which he left for Libya. The Operations Room group was accused of briefly abducting Libyan prime minister Ali Zeidan in Tripoli last October. Three years after the revolution that ousted former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, Libya's still weak government and army is struggling to impose its authority on the remaining anti-Gaddafi rebels and Islamist militias, most of them heavily armed. However, the rebels and militias have refused to disarm and often remain more loyal to their brigades, tribal leaders or local regions than they do to the new Libyan government.
