SKHIRATE, Morocco —  Libya’s warring factions held United Nations-backed talks on Thursday in an effort to end a conflict between two rival governments that threatens to drive the country into full-blown civil war.

Air strikes between rival forces intensified before Thursday’s negotiations on Libya, where Western governments worry spreading chaos is allowing Islamist militants to gain ground in a threat to mainland Europe across the Mediterranean.

The internationally-recognized government and elected House of Representatives have had to operate out of the east of the North African state since an armed alliance known as Libya Dawn took over the capital Tripoli and set up its own self-declared government last year.

Both centers of power are backed by heavily-armed alliances of former rebels who fought together to oust Muammar Gaddafi in 2011 but later fell out in a battle for control of oil wealth.

Western officials see the U.N. talks in Morocco as the only hope of forming a unity government and halting the fighting. But previous talks have yielded little.

“There is a sense of, if it’s not optimism, at least a sense that it is possible to make a deal, and that is something very important, because in the last months, this was not the case,” U.N. envoy Bernardino Leon told reporters after the first session.

Delegates at the talks in the coastal town of Skhirate near Rabat met separately with the United Nations mediators. The talks agenda includes a unity government and security.