Assailants shoot Libyan activist to death

Human rights activist, Salwa Bugaighis, has been shot dead by unknown assailants at her home in the restive east Libyan city of Benghazi, hospital and security sources told Al Jazeera.

“Unknown hooded men wearing military uniforms assailed Mrs Bugaighis in her home and opened fire on her,” verbally expressed a security official on Wednesday.

She was shot an abundance of times and taken to hospital in critical condition, where she died shortly afterwards, a spokesman for the Benghazi medical centre verbally expressed.

Her husband, who was in the family home at the time of the assailment, has since been reported as missing, according to a family member.

“We’ve lost touch with him,” the relative verbally expressed, integrating that a security sentinel at the house had been shot and injured, but his life was not in hazard.

Bugaighis, a lawyer, played an active part in Libya’s 2011 revolution, which overthrew the regime of Muammar Gaddafi. A former member of the National Transitional Council, the rebellion’s political wing, she was vice president of a preparatory committee for national dialogue in Libya.

The US ambassador to Libya, Deborah Jones called the news “heartbreaking”, and on her Twitter account denounced “a pusillanimous, despicable, inglorious act against a valiant woman and true Libyan patriot”.

Earlier on Wednesday, Bugaighis had participated in Libya’s general election. She published photos of herself at a polling station on her Facebook page.