Libyans in several cities took to the streets on Friday to express their anger with the government over power cuts.
Local television stations reported that protesters broke into the building of the parliament in Tobruk and committed acts of vandalism. Images also showed columns of black smoke coming from outside the building.
Security forces protecting the parliament withdrew from the site, Reuters cited an eyewitness as saying.
Libya's parliament, or House of Representatives, has been based in Tobruk, hundreds of kilometers east of the capital, Tripoli, since an east-west split in 2014 after the uprising and western intervention that ousted longtime dictator Moammar Gadhafi three years earlier.
A rival body, formally known as the High Council of State, is based in Tripoli.
Protests across the divided country
In Tripoli's Martyrs' Square, several hundred people gathered to shout slogans demanding electricity, criticizing armed factions and politicians and demanding elections in the capital's biggest protests against the ruling elite for years.
Smaller protests of dozens of demonstrators also took place in each of Benghazi and Tobruk and some smaller towns, showing how anger at the situation extends across the geographical divide between the country's rival forces.
Libya has endured several days of power cuts, worsened by the blockade of several oil facilities against the backdrop of political rivalries.
"We want the lights to work," protesters chanted.
Deadlock in Libya
Presidential and parliamentary elections, originally set for December last year, were meant to cap a UN-led peace process following the end of the last major round of violence in 2020.
But the vote never took place due to several contentious candidacies and deep disagreements over the polls' legal basis between rival power centers in the east and west.
The United Nations said on Thursday that talks between the rival Libyan institutions aimed at breaking the deadlock had failed to resolve key differences.
sms, dh/msh (AFP, Reuters)
