The United States is to base its US ambassador to Libya in Malta on a temporary basis following the evacuation of the US embassy in Tripoli last week.

Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes told CNN’s Candy Crawley that ambassador Deborah Jones will be based in Malta to continue to work with the Libyans.

“We have an envoy who is dedicated to brokering those types of agreements among the different Libyan factions. And in fact President Obama will welcome a Libyan delegation to the summit of African leaders in the coming week. We are going to keep working on it, Candy, because we do believe that there is a huge opportunity in Libya if we can bring the different factions together,” Mr Rhodes said.

Some 150 Americans were evacuated from the US embassy as violence in the area of the embassy intensified. They left in a convoy of cars to Tunisia.