Haftar's Libyan National Army launched an attack on rebels in Chad

(Patria) - Libyan troops loyal to eastern strongman Khalifa Haftar launched an airstrike on the headquarters of Chadian rebels in the southern desert late on Friday, his office announced, AFP reports.

The conflict that has engulfed Libya for the past 12 years has led its rival leaders to forge alliances with various rebel factions in neighboring Chad and Sudan.

On Friday evening, the air force of Haftar's Libyan National Army (LNA) bombed Chadian rebel positions on the Libyan side of the border before launching an airstrike, its press office announced.

The immediate target was an unfinished residential complex in the remote Umm al-Araneb outpost in the Murzuq district, where more than 2,000 houses under construction were taken over by rebel fighters and their families, said LNA chief press officer Khalifa al-Obeidi.

Haftar's son, Saddam, who heads the LNA's ground forces, was "on the border of Chad to oversee operations... to clear the area of armed gangs," Obeidi added.

Haftar's spokesman, Ahmad al-Mesmari, promised that the LNA "will no longer allow armed groups or factions to use Libyan territory to launch attacks on neighboring countries".

The LNA did not specify which Chadian armed faction was the target of its operation. Numerous rebel groups operate from the Tibesti Mountains located on the border.

Earlier this month, Chad's transitional president Mahamat Idriss Deby Itno visited the far north to rally his troops after an attack by the self-proclaimed Military Command Council for the Salvation of the Republic (CCMSR), which was active in the border region.

Libya has rival administrations based in the east and west, and Abdelhamid Dbeibah's UN-backed government in Tripoli is fighting for power with the Haftar-backed administration in the east.