Libya's prime minister flew to a desert oasis city on Sunday to try to patch up a tribal dispute that has killed about 150 people over the past week and underscored the ethnic faultlines threatening Libya's stability.
A Reuters team that flew with the prime minister to Sabha, about 750 km south (450 miles) of the Libyan capital, said a ceasefire appeared to be holding between the Tibu ethnic group and the Sabha militias with which they had been clashing.
Smashed windows at a conference centre and burned-out vehicles in a Tibu-controlled neighbourhood bore testimony to the fighting over the past days, some of the worst since a revolt last year ousted Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.
Asked about the situation in Sabha, Prime Minister Abdurrahim El-Keib told Reuters: "It's much better than I thought."
He said he wanted to show the opposing sides in Sabha that the new Libya had a place for all tribes and ethnic groups.
The Tibu have black skin and some have ties to neighbouring Chad, while their opponents are lighter-skinned ethnic Arabs who see the Tibu as outsiders.
"Every Libyan is important to us. We're going to take care of them like we do take care of any other Libyan, like our brothers and sisters," Keib told Reuters after addressing about 500 local people from the non-Tibu camp.
"This problem has a historical background ... The past regime has used and abused this problem," he said, in reference to Gaddafi's tactic of playing up tribal differences to weaken any opposition against him.
Keib was then heckled by a man who was shouting that the government was late in acting to stop the clashes and called on the military to deal with the Tibu.
Keib tried to talk to the heckler but his security detail ushered him into a car to head onto his next meeting, with Tibu elders.
