Russia evacuated its diplomats and their families from Libya on Thursday, hours after two protesters died in an assault on its embassy in Tripoli.
A statement from the foreign ministry in Moscow said the evacuation of its staff to Tunisia was a precaution after the embassy came under attack from guns and rockets on Wednesday night and again the next morning.
On Thursday, bullet holes marked the tall beige walls of the deserted compound in the upmarket Dahra district and a burned-out Toyota car sat by the battered front gates. With no police guard in evidence, local shopkeepers said they feared a fresh attack.
Police were questioning a 24-year-old Russian woman whose arrest, on charges of killing a Libyan air force officer, is understood to have triggered the embassy attack.
Authorities were unclear as to why the woman, named only as Katerina, was in Libya; they said she had entered the country on a journalist visa but had refused to say if she worked as one.
Hashim Bishar, head of Tripoli's supreme security council, told the Guardian Katerina had befriended the officer, Mohammed Alsusi, a specialist in advanced aeronautical engineering, while living in Tripoli, and had converted to Islam.
According to Bishar, Katerina arrived at Alsusi's home in Tripoli's Suq Juma district on Tuesday dressed in a long hijab, which she removed to reveal Libyan army green boots, desert camouflage trousers and a black sweater. She then killed Alsusi with his own machine gun and wrote "Death to Rats" on his wall in his blood. The term "rats" was used by Muammar Gaddafi to describe rebels during the 2011 Arab spring uprising.
Bishar said that while making her escape, the Russian then shot at Alsusi's mother and, when the gun appeared to jam, then stabbed and wounded her.
The Russian embassy assault follows an attack on the European Union ambassador's convoy in August, the bombing of the French embassy in April, attacks on a United Arab Emirates building and the Italian consulate in Benghazi, and the killing a year ago of US ambassador Chris Stevens at the US consulate in Benghazi.