Two bombs struck the empty residence of the Iranian ambassador in the Libyan capital on Sunday, security officials said, but nobody was hurt.

Two bombs struck the empty residence of the Iranian ambassador in the Libyan capital on Sunday, security officials said, but nobody was hurt.

Al-Jazeera English website reported that the so-called 'Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant' (ISIL) takfiri group has claimed responsibility for attack in the central district of Tripoli.

"Two devices were laid, one exploded first and then the other. The point of the second bomb was to create confusion," Colonel Jumaa al-Mashri from the National Security Agency told Tripoli-based al-Nabaa television on Sunday.

Another security source said no one was hurt as "the building was empty and the guard was not at his post at the time of the attack."

After weeks of bloody fighting in Tripoli that triggered an exodus of foreign residents and prompted most embassies to close, the city was seized in August by the Fajr Libya militia alliance.

Photos posted online by a reporter of an Iranian news agency showed destroyed concrete and steel scattered outside the building.

The Iranian ambassador's residence is in an area of Tripoli where several diplomatic missions are located.

Witnesses said windows at the nearby Ukrainian embassy were shattered by the impact of the blasts.

The attack was the latest to target a diplomatic mission in Tripoli, where most embassies have been shut since summer 2014 as militias battled for control of the city.

In January, ISIL claimed responsibility for an attack with explosives that targeted the empty Algerian embassy in Tripoli, wounding a security guard and two passers-by.

ISIL terrorists have been gaining ground in Libya, feeding on chaos that has engulfed the country since dictator Moammar Gaddafi was toppled and killed in 2011.