Benghazi, cradle of the revolt in Libya that toppled Moamer Kadhafi last year, is sticking to its revolutionary guns, with some factions vowing to sabotage Saturday's election for a national assembly.
Factions in the east demanding greater representation in the incoming General National Congress forced five strategic oil facilities to shut on the eve of the landmark vote.
They want seats in the legislature equally split along regional lines and have threatened to sabotage the election, a major milestone for the North African nation as it seeks to wrench itself from the shackles of decades of dictatorship.
Suspected arsonists on Thursday torched a depot containing electoral material in the Mediterranean city of Ajdabiya, 160 kilometres (100 miles) south of Benghazi.
And earlier in the week, armed men ransacked election offices in Benghazi itself.
The electoral commission on Thursday said the vote, which was originally scheduled for 19, would not be delayed a second time because of the unrest.
The authorities have warned that there could be a voting freeze in districts hit by violence, but there have been no guidelines issued to that effect.
The unilateral proclamation of autonomy in the the oil-rich east region of Cyrenaica in March sparked the fury of the authorities and raised fears of fragmentation.
"This region has suffered a long history of marginalisation and exclusion, be it under Kadhafi or the current regime," said Abdeljawad al-Badin, spokesman of the self-appointed Council of Cyrenaica, which has thousands of backers.
"We will not tolerate being marginalised again," he stressed.
Spearhead of the resistance against the Italian occupation in the 1930s, the east has emerged as a potential party spoiler on the eve of the election, the first after 42 years of dictatorship under slain leader Kadhafi.
The majority of the old regime's opponents emerged from the east.
Kadhafi, who had zero-tolerance for dissent, branded them "stray dogs," and hundreds in their ranks were liquidated, thrown behind bars or forced into the relative safety of exile.
The 1990s saw bloody clashes between the regime's forces and jihadist Islamist movements concentrated in Benghazi and Derna, which lies further east on the road to Egypt.
The majority of the victims of the notorious 1996 Abu Slim prison massacre in Tripoli, when government forces gunned down 1,200 inmates, also hailed from the east of the country.
The families of the latter played a major role in sparking the February 17 2011 uprising that escalated into civil war and ultimately led to the strongman's death and ouster.
Kadhafi was captured and killed last October in his home town of Sirte.
The wrath of the east has not spared the now ruling National Transitional Council (NTC), which had its wartime base in Benghazi.
In December, thousands of demonstrators flooded the streets calling for the fall of the interim NTC and the amendment of the transition process.
Abdel Hafiz Ghoga, who was deputy chairman of the NTC, resigned from his post the following month after more protests and an attack on government offices.
In recent months Benghazi has been rocked by a series of attacks on government institutions, including courts, and Western targets.
Libyan political analyst Moataz Wanis says that the east has once again been excluded from the corridors of power.
Kadhafi, he added, worked hard to separate the east and west.
"There is a giant fault line between the two regions which has become all the more visible after Kadhafi's fall," he said.
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