SIRTE  - Residents of Sirte are gearing up to vote in Saturday’s Libyan election, hoping it will help bring prosperity to the war-battered hometown of slain dictator Moammar Gaddafi and erase his legacy.

“This is the first step towards security and prosperity of Sirte in the new Libya,” said Khalid Saad, a local in Sirte’s Dollar district. “My destroyed town has to be rebuilt. This can happen by participating in the election. Once security and prosperity return to Sirte, Gaddafi will be forgotten.”
The Dollar district and nearby Number Two neighbourhood were the last battlefields before the town fell to former rebels last year. Posters and banners of independent candidates or those representing political parties were seen mostly on main squares.
A round of gunfire struck a helicopter transporting electoral material for vote, killing an election commission worker, officials said. “A helicopter carrying ballots and flying over the region of Hawari (south of Benghazi) was struck by small arms fire,” army spokesman Colonel Ali al-Sheikhi said. “One person on board was killed.”
The helicopter, he added, made a safe landing at Benina International Airport, which serves the eastern city of Benghazi.
An official of Libya’s electoral commission said a colleague was killed in the incident.
Also on Friday, the eve of elections, two rockets hit Benghazi Medical Centre, without causing casualties or material damage, according to an official at the hospital, Ala Ben al-Kazza.
The motive of the attack was unclear but Benghazi residents speculated that electoral material was being stocked in the premises.
The violence comes ahead of Saturday’s landmark elections for a national assembly, the first democratic poll after more than four decades of dictatorship under Moammar Gaddafi, who was toppled and killed last year.
East Libya is the heartland of several groups threatening to sabotage the elections unless the country’s interim rulers review the allocation of seats in the General National Congress.
The current system allocates 100 seats to the west, 60 to the east and 40 to the south. Advocates of federalism are demanding an equal distribution of seats between Libya’s regions.