Prominent female Libyan activist slain

CAIRO: One of Libya’s most prominent female activists was assassinated in the restive eastern city of Benghazi when gunmen stormed her house, the state news agency reported Thursday, in slaying that stunned many Libyans.
Salwa Bugaighis, a lawyer and rights activist, was at the forefront in the 2011 uprising against dictator Muammar Qaddafi and had since become an international face for Libyans’ efforts to build democracy in their country. She was among the most outspoken voices against militiamen and radicals who have run rampant in the country since Qaddafi’s fall.
Bugaighis was shot in the head on Wednesday night, just hours after casting her ballot in Libya’s Parliament elections, the state news agency LANA reported. She was rushed to a hospital where she died of her wounds, it said.
Earlier in the day, she had been speaking by phone from her home on a Libyan TV channel about fighting raging near her neighborhood, sparked when militants attacked army troops that had been deploying to protest polling station.
“These are people who want to foil elections,” she told Al-Nabaa network as rattling gunfire interrupted her call. “Benghazi has been always defiant, and always will be despite the pain and fear. It will succeed.”
In the evening, five gunmen broke into her home, the house’s guard told police. They first asked about her son Wael, then shot the guard in the leg, then broke into the house. The guard said he heard gunfire from inside.
Bugaighis’s husband, who is a member of the Benghazi municipal council and was also at home at the time, has disappeared since the attack.