West says goodbye and good luck to war-torn Libya

Three years after Western powers helped Libyan rebels overthrow dictator Muammar Gaddafi, they have, at least temporarily, abandoned efforts on the ground to bolster Libya's foundering democracy.

On Wednesday, France evacuated its embassy in Tripoli, where warring militias have traded rocket and artillery fire over the past two weeks in the worst violence in the capital since Gaddafi's ousting. French ships moved diplomats and French and other European citizens across the Mediterranean to Toulon, France, just days after US diplomats left by road for Tunisia and then travelled to Malta, where they have set up an embassy-in-absentia.

Although Britain has not formally suspended operations at its Tripoli mission, it has removed all but essential personnel and advised all citizens to leave the country.

The growing turmoil marks a major setback for a country that just two years ago held its first free elections in four decades. What many Western officials hoped would be a democratic rebirth for Libya has instead given way to a battle for power and influence among armed groups who claim to be the rightful heirs of the anti-Gaddafi revolution.

Combatants are broadly divided between Islamist and secular militias. And although the Americans and Europeans are not seen as direct targets of either, some US counterterrorism officials say the Islamists could seek to align themselves with al-Qaeda affiliates or with the Islamic State organisation that has seized wide swathes of territory in Syria and Iraq.

"You watch, the guys in Libya will want to be a part of it," a senior US defence official said. Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was already attracting support in North and West Africa, he said.