Libya's government accused an "outlaw" retired general and his irregular forces Saturday of trying to carry out a coup as they fight to crush Islamist militants in the restive eastern city of Benghazi.

Khalifa Haftar, who lead ground forces in the 2011 uprising that toppled Moammar Gadhafi, used warplanes and helicopters Friday to support an offensive in pitched battles that killed 37 people.

A retired Libyan general said Saturday he would press his campaign to free Benghazi of "terrorist groups" a day after clashes in the restive eastern city killed 24 people.

"The operation will continue until Benghazi is purged of terrorists," Khalifa Haftar told the broadcaster Libya Awalan of the country's second city, where the uprising against doomed dictator Moammar Gadhafi erupted in February 2011.

Algeria has closed its embassy and its consulate in Tripoli because of a "real and imminent threat" to its diplomats, the foreign ministry announced on Friday.

The decision was taken in coordination with the Libyan authorities, after certain information was received "about the existence of a real and imminent threat targeting our diplomats and consular staff," the ministry said.

Libyan forces loyal to a rogue general, vowing to flush "terrorists" out of Benghazi, clashed with former rebel Islamist groups in the eastern city Friday, killing 24 people and wounding some 150.

The violence in what was the cradle of Libya's 2011 revolution comes weeks after the government acknowledged for the first time the existence of "terrorist groups" in the country and said it was mobilizing against them.

Gunmen killed a moderate Muslim cleric and two soldiers in Libya's second city Benghazi Thursday as violence showed no let-up in the cradle of the 2011 uprising.

Sheikh Mansur Abdelkarim al-Baraassi, who was well known for his opposition to the hardline Islamists who are a powerful force in the eastern city, was gunned down as he left a central mosque, medical and security sources said.

The U.S. military has moved a team of marines from Spain to southern Italy as a precautionary step in case the U.S. embassy in Libya comes under threat, officials said Wednesday.

The contingent of nearly 200 marines is part of a newly-created "crisis response" force set up in the wake of a deadly attack on a U.S. diplomatic outpost in the Libyan city of Benghazi in 2012.

Jordan's ambassador to Libya was freed and flown home on Tuesday, a month after being kidnapped, in an exchange for a Libyan jihadist jailed in Jordan for plotting bomb attacks.

A Jordanian minister told AFP that ambassador Fawaz Aitan had been released, and that the jihadist would serve out the rest of his life prison sentence in his homeland under an extradition agreement ratified on Thursday.

Four Libyan soldiers were shot dead on Sunday in separate incidents in the restive eastern city of Benghazi, cradle of the 2011 uprising, security and medical sources said.

"Unidentified gunmen killed four soldiers and wounded another in Benghazi, while another was wounded in an assassination attempt," a security official told Agence France Presse.

At least 36 immigrants died and 42 are reported missing after a makeshift boat was wrecked off Libya's coast, a naval spokesman told Agence France Presse on Sunday.

Colonel Ayub Kassem said the accident took place on Tuesday.

Libya's ex-intelligence chief Abdullah Senussi appeared in a Tripoli court with his lawyers for the first time Sunday, accused of abuses during the 2011 uprising that toppled strongman Moammar Gadhafi.

It was the first hearing he has attended with the four lawyers picked by his family, just one of whom is Libyan. The other three are Tunisian.