It was, by all appearances, a jihadist pool party - staged at an abandoned American diplomatic compound in the Libyan capital.
In video footage posted online on Sunday, a group of laughing, whooping men identified as members of an Islamist-linked group - some in black paramilitary-appearing outfits, some in summertime civilian wear - clowned, mugged for the camera and did swan dives off a second-floor balcony into a swimming pool said to be in an annex of the US embassy in Tripoli, which was evacuated last month amid heavy fighting.
The images were emblematic of Libya in free fall, with the oil-rich North African nation spiralling into all-out civil war more than three years after the toppling of long-time dictator Muammar Gaddafi. And the spectacle of a breached diplomatic compound - even one empty of any American personnel - stirred memories of the Benghazi attack nearly two years ago that killed the then-ambassador, Christopher Stevens.
The current US ambassador to Libya, Deborah Jones, who has been overseeing American diplomatic activity from Malta, said on Twitter that the footage appeared to have been shot in a residential compound at the embassy.
A commander for an Islamist faction called Libyan Dawn said on Sunday that the militia had "secured" the residential annex. Witnesses cited by the news agency said the compound did not appear to have been ransacked or looted, though some windows were broken, and it quoted the commander as urging foreign envoys to return.
It is not clear when the video was shot.
The American diplomatic staff was spirited out of Tripoli after fighting - centred on the capital's now-wrecked international airport - came too close to the embassy grounds. In what was described as an orderly departure, the staffers were taken overland to neighbouring Tunisia on July 26, under the escort of US marines backed by air power and naval vessels offshore.
The State Department said at the time that the closing of the US embassy was a suspension of an American diplomatic presence rather than an end. Most other diplomatic installations in Tripoli, those of neighbouring Arab countries as well as Western nations, have also been closed.
The video shows men milling around a pool in front of a stately looking whitewashed building with black wrought-iron railings. Gleeful shouts ring out as some leap fully clothed into the blue but slightly cloudy water. At one point, the cameraman says, in Arabic: "This is the US embassy!"
Libyan armed groups, once allied in the fight against Gaddafi, turned on one another after toppling and killing him in 2011. In June of this year, the Islamists suffered harsh setbacks in parliamentary elections, and the conflict between them and other nationalist and tribal militias escalated in recent months into full-scale armed conflict.
The violent unrest has left Tripoli under control of Libyan Dawn, while the elected government has set up operations in the eastern city of Tobruk.
This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as Militants throw pool party at US embassy in Tripoli