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Diplomats in Libya have confirmed a Russian woman sparked an attack on her country's embassy in Tripoli, RT reported.

A former weight lifter, she had been in Libya since 2011 after heading there to fight on the side of Muammar Gaddafi in the civil war. Russian officials say the alleged killing of a Libyan Air Force pilot and his mother by 24-year-old Ekaterina Ustyuzhaninova triggered the embassy attack. Diplomatic staff and their families have now left the country for their own safety.

While in Libya Ekaterina Uztyuzhaninova gained notoriety as a political activist. Using the pen name Katya Cyaegha she became one of the most vocal and passionate members of the online community supporting Col. Gaddafi.

Ustyuzhaninova is known to have been an accomplished weight lifter and won a number of competitions in Russia and participated in several international events.

“She is not a bad person, but she wasn’t completely stable since some tragic events in her life,” Dmitry Ershov, who met her when he was looking for people to work as journalists in wartime Libya. He told Life News. “She wanted to go to Libya, but not for journalistic work. She supported the image of Muammar Gaddafi. Not his regime, but his image.”

At the peak of the Libyan conflict, 'Cyaegha' raised money to fund her one-woman expeditionary force. She travelled to Libya through Tunisia, saying that her goal was “to help Gaddafi or die for him.”

She managed to publish a number of reports of her exploits in Tripoli, which by that time was taken by the ‘rats’ – the derogatory name she used for the opposition forces. The messages were full of disdain for Gaddafi’s enemies and showed Cyaegha’s disregard for her personal safety.

“Some guy threatened me with an assault rifle and even shot in the ground next to my feet. But when he saw that I’m not afraid and have a knife, he ran away with his ass forward,” one of her first reports said.