On 24 April, Libya’s Grand Mufti Sadiq al-Ghariyani said on his Tanasuh TV channel that the presence of Russian Wagner/ Africa Corp fighters in Libya supporting the Libyan National Army (LNA) represented ‘an occupation by an infidel, atheist state that must be resisted and waged jihad against.’ He called on Libyans who possess weapons to assassinate those he described as ‘atheist Russians’ in the streets in eastern and southern Libya, to harass and refuse to engage harass them, and to view them as foreign invaders that must be eliminated.
Al-Ghariyani said that several ships had arrived in Libya in recent weeks carrying hundreds of thousands of tons of equipment and weapons coming from Syria to support the Russian-African Corps, which he said would have its main base in Libya according to an agreement between Moscow and LNA commander Khalifa Haftar.