Libya's UN-supported government launched a counterattack on Sunday against a strategic military base used by renegade commander Khalifa Haftar to pound the capital Tripoli with rocket fire. The response came after a missile barrage damaged Tripoli's main airport and set fuel tanks and several aircraft ablaze, with at least six civilians killed in surrounding residential areas in the attacks on Saturday. Meanwhile, Turkey - the Government of National Accord's (GNA) main ally defending Tripoli against Haftar's Libyan National Army (LNA) - threatened to step up its attacks against the eastern-based LNA, which has attempted to seize the capital for more than a year. "The forces of war criminal [Haftar] fired more than a hundred rockets and missiles at residential areas in the centre of the capital," the GNA said in a statement on Facebook. The airport was badly damaged and came under renewed rocket fire on Sunday morning, it said.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo scoffed Tuesday at a suggestion that Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani was on a diplomatic mission to Baghdad when a U.S. drone strike killed him, insisting that the story is "fundamentally false" and "propaganda." "Anybody here believe that?" Pompeo asked reporters when the claim was brought up during a Tuesday press briefing. "We know that wasn't true." The notion that Soleimani was on some sort of peace mission was first floated by Iraqi Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi, who reportedly said at a Sunday session he was scheduled to meet with Soleimani and discuss a message from Saudi Arabia regarding possible agreements in the region. Pompeo addressed the claim that Soleimani was supposed to work on a peace agreement with Saudi Arabia, stating that he spoke to Saudi officials about this.