Twelve soldiers of armed forces led by Marshal Khalifa Haftar have been killed in two days of fighting with jihadists in Libya's second city of Benghazi, military sources said Wednesday.

They said 10 were killed on Tuesday and another two on Wednesday in west Benghazi. "Our forces have made a clear advance," one military official told AFP.

Benghazi, birthplace of the 2011 revolution which toppled Libya's longtime dictator Moamer Kadhafi, has been the scene of daily clashes for the past two years between Haftar's forces and jihadist militias holding onto pockets of the city.

Five years after the revolution, the country is embroiled in violence and run by two rival administrations.