Libyan Military Chief Haftar Returns to Benghazi – Reports

CAIRO (Sputnik) - Libya’s National Army (LNA) commander Khalifa Haftar has returned to the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi after alleged treatment in France and reports on his death, local media reported on Thursday.

Haftar’s arrival to the Benghazi airport has been aired by the Libyan broadcasters.

Conflicting media reports emerged earlier in April about Haftar's health condition. French newspaper Le Monde said that the 74-year-old commander, whose forces control the east of the country, was admitted to a Paris hospital after suffering a stroke. Later, reports emerged that Haftar died. Ahmed Mesmari, an army spokesman, dismissed all speculations in the media as false.

Haftar was born in 1943. He was one of officers who helped Muammar Gaddafi to seize power in Libya in 1969. In the 1980s he was exiled to the United States.

In 2011, he returned to Libya to join the revolution, which toppled Gaddafi. Following the revolution, he was fighting against terrorism and radical Islamists in the crisis-torn country, and established control over a large part of Libya’s eastern regions.