Forces allied to Libya’s eastern government carried out air strikes on Islamic State militant areas of Derna city, but an aircraft later crashed because of mechanical failure, a spokesman said on Monday.

Libyan National Army forces, led by Gen. Khalifa Haftar, carried out an air strike on the Hay Arrbamiya area of Derna, a city that has been the scene of fighting between Islamic State militants and rival Islamist fighters.

An eyewitness in the city confirmed an airstrike on Derna in the area controlled by Islamic State but could not give details on any damage or casualties.

“An aircraft of the LNA, a MiG-23, crashed due to a technical problem,” LNA local spokesman AbdulKareem Sabra said, adding it had been involved in air strikes on the city. “The pilot managed to escape and is well.”

Libya is caught in a conflict between two rival factions, each with its own government and backed by competing brigades of former rebels who once battled together against Muammar Gaddafi in their 2011 uprising.

The United Nations has backed a separate national unity government, which is still trying to gain support and traction on the ground and overcome divisions before establishing itself in Tripoli.

Air strikes by unidentified jets often target suspected Islamist militant targets, including fighters loyal to Islamic State who have been present in Derna and have a stronghold further west along the Mediterranean coast in the city of Sirte.

reuters.com

Plans are being made in Washington, London, Paris and Rome for military intervention in Libya in the next few weeks, probably in March, to counter the rise of the so-called Islamic State (IS or ISIS or ISIL or Daesh).

Reports indicate that the government of Britain’s prime minister David Cameron is making preparations for a military intervention in Libya in the next few weeks. “Italians are doing a lot of surveillance, identification of targets for possible bombing by the British and Americans,” according to a British analyst.

British opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn said there were “growing signs that the British Government may be preparing to intervene militarily again in Libya,” and he is demanding that the Parliament be given a chance to debate any future plans for military intervention in Libya:

The Prime Minister should report to Parliament on what steps have already been taken – and, in particular, whether UK drones are being used to support armed forces or militias in Libya’s civil war by gathering intelligence for one side or the other.

We need an unequivocal assurance that no decision has been taken to use drones, over which Britain has control or partial control, in support of military operations in Libya. And he must make a clear commitment that MPs will be given the chance to debate in advance any decision to renew British military intervention in Libya.

During Saturday evening’s Republican candidate debate, there was one question about Libya asked of two candidates, Jeb Bush and Ben Carson. The question and Bush’s answer were (my transcription):

Question: Governor Bush, Libya is a country in chaos, there is no government. Defense officials said this week that there are now 5,000 ISIS fighters there roughly doubling previous estimates. We know you and others have been critical of the administration’s handling of initial airstrikes that you supported. This is a problem you would stand to inherit if you’re the next president. Reports this week said the administration is considering new air strikes, possible special operations raids. Would you support renewed airstrikes or any US involvement on the ground?

Bush: I would, and I would do it in concert again with our Arab allies, and with Europe most particularly in this case. This is the lesson learned in history: if you bomb something and not do anything as it relates to deal with the aftermath of this, if you don’t have a stable government, you get what we have in Libya, and leading from behind is not an effective policy. We have to lead. Without the United States, nothing seems to work. Europe doesn’t seem to have the ability to forward lead in this regard. And so dealing with the caliphate is important because it has now spawned in other areas, there have been 70+ attacks in 17 countries either inspired by ISIS or organized by ISIS, Libya being the most important one now.

We have to deal with the caliphate with building a Sunni army there, but we also have to deal with it in Libya, and I think the United States is ultimately is going to play a significant role in this.

The problem with the Obama administration is that they see this incrementally. They’re reluctant. They don’t lead. No one knows whether we’re serious. And when they do it, they do it in increments that you can barely see. The United States has to lead in a much more aggressive way than we’re doing right now.

Ben Carson’s response was as follows:

Carson: I wanna something say about this, because I’m not here just to add beauty to the stage. You know I’ve been talking about Libya for quite a long time. I think I was the first one to start talking about it. Because we have to have a proactive foreign policy strategy, and of course the next place that ISIS is gonna tack to is Libya. If you wanna expand your caliphate, and increase your influence, then you’re gonna wanna go to a place that’s strategically located. You go north across the Mediterranean, you’re into southern Europe; you go south, you’re into Chad and Sudan and Niger, and not to mention the fact you have much more oil than you do in Iraq.

That’s the kind of places they’re gonna go to. Therefore, we need to be thinking about how to prevent them from tacking over there. They’re already sending their fighters there. We need to be consulting with our military experts and asking them, what do they need in order to prevent ISIS from being able to take over Libya. That’s gonna have enormous consequences.

A British government spokesman said: “The UK, along with international partners, is supporting the process to form a recognized Libyan government. No decisions have been made about the future deployment of any British military forces to Libya as part of an international coalition force.” Independent (London)

breitbart.com

As Islamic State forces lose ground in Iraq and Syria, fighters loyal to the group have seized territory in oil-rich Libya, levying taxes at gunpoint and creating sanctuaries to launch possible attacks in North Africa and Europe, U.S. officials say.

The Pentagon has sent special operations teams to gather intelligence and launched at least one airstrike. But the White House so far has resisted calls from some senior aides to escalate the U.S. military role in another Muslim country to counter the potential threat.

Spy satellites and reconnaissance drones have shown the militants building fortifications around Surt, on the central Mediterranean coast and on training bases for foreign fighters farther inland, the officials said.

A U.S. intelligence estimate this week concluded that Islamic State has attracted more than 5,000 fighters in Libya, double the official estimate last fall, making it the extremist group’s largest and most potent affiliate outside Syria and Iraq.

Islamic State threatens to gain a “stranglehold” in Libya and potential “access to billions of dollars of oil revenue,” Secretary of State John F. Kerry warned, one of several alarms the administration has raised in recent days.

He spoke at a Feb. 2 conference in Rome where the U.S. and 22 other nations agreed to support the formation of a unity government in Tripoli, the capital, in a tenuous effort to restore stability and take on the militants.

Libya has had no functioning central government since the North Atlantic Treaty Organization bombing campaign helped a popular uprising oust ruler Moammar Kadafi in 2011.

It has faced political chaos and a low-grade civil war nearly ever since, with two rival governments battling for control, and squabbling militias exploiting the power vacuum.

“In the absence of a true government, [militant groups] have grown unchecked,” said a U.S. defense official, who was not authorized to speak publicly. “It’s like Syria all over again.”

Islamic State “has a bad habit of growing in places that are ungoverned,” Tina Kaidanow, the State Department’s counter-terrorism coordinator said last week at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank.

She cited an urgency at the White House and among its allies to move quickly before the group expands beyond its current foothold, which extends about 100 miles east and west of Surt.

“We don’t want to see the growth of [Islamic State] outpace what will be a long-term effort to build out a successful Libyan government,” she said.

The group’s rise comes as foreign fighters from Tunisia and elsewhere in Africa have moved to Surt and other strongholds in Libya, rather than to the war zones in Syria and Iraq, where the militants have suffered several military setbacks in recent months from the U.S.-led coalition.

The Pentagon wants to ensure that Libya doesn’t “get on a glide slope” where it “gathers a piece of territory from which it’s able to tyrannize people and plot operations elsewhere,” Defense Secretary Ashton Carter told reporters Thursday at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada.

“That’s the situation we want to avoid in Libya,” he said.

Any military intervention probably would be led by France and Italy, the former colonial power. Options include sending troops from Italy to help protect the new government, using U.S. and French advisors to train Libyan counter-terrorism forces, and launching airstrikes.

For now, British and American special operations teams and intelligence services have focused on identifying Islamic State leaders, assessing their networks and strongholds, and reaching out to local militias willing to fight them, officials said.

But intelligence officials say the militias are unreliable, poorly organized and divided by region and tribe, as well as by outside support, the same complex problem that has crippled U.S. attempts to unify opposition groups in Syria.

Islamist and Berber militias in the west, assisted by Qatar, for example, have engaged in brutal clashes with more secular forces in the east apparently led by former Kadafi loyalists and supported by Egypt and the United Arab Emirates.

Islamic State fighters have attacked oil fields and installations, hobbling a major source of income for the fledgling government. Oil production has fallen in half from a year ago, according to the state-run National Oil Corp.

The only known U.S. airstrike was in November, when F-15 fighter jets killed a senior Islamic State commander known as Abu Nabil near the eastern city of Derna. Officials said the Iraqi national narrated a video released last year that showed militants beheading 21 Egyptian workers, all Coptic Christians, in Libya.

Some national security experts warn that ISIS, a common acronym for Islamic State, is quietly taking root in Libya much as it did in Syria before the militants’ blitz across Iraq in early 2014, seizing cities, oil fields, military bases and banks.

“I think it’s increasingly a national security priority for us to limit the spread of ISIS in Libya given the expansion that’s been seen recently,” said Ben Fishman, former top National Security Council official on North Africa affairs. “It’s obviously connected to an aggressive move from ISIS central in Syria to take advantage of the disorder in Libya.”

Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Burbank), the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, urged the White House to launch airstrikes against the militants’ leaders. He warned that Islamic State could use Libya “as a gateway into Southern Europe.”

Islamic State established a foothold in Libya in September 2014 when some militants who had fought in Syria returned home to join forces with extremist militias that had pledged alliance to the group’s leader, Abu Bakr Baghdadi.

Several senior commanders also were sent from Syria and Iraq to help organize the expansion of the group’s self-declared caliphate, a strict Islamic-ruled quasi-state.

It quickly became a breeding ground for exporting violence.

The gunmen who killed 20 people at a museum in Tunis, capital of Tunisia, in March were trained in Libya, local officials said. So were the gunmen who massacred 38 people at a Tunisian seaside resort in June.

To address the threat, Tunisia began building a security wall along parts of its border with Libya. U.S. officials have suggested that Egypt, Libya’s eastern neighbor, take similar precautions.

latimes.com

ISIS have unveiled a new jihadi training camp in the Egyptian desert as the group continues to pose a threat in the Sinai peninsula.

The images were taken at the Abu Hajr al-Masri training camp, named after a former Egyptian jihadi and is situated in the remote Sinai desert.

The small group of recruits are shown practicing with weapons and undergoing fitness training.

According to a US defense official, the number of Daesh militants in Syria and Iraq has fallen by the hundreds, but is on the rise in Libya, AFP reported Thursday.

Out of the original tally of 20, 000 to 33,000 militants in Iraq and Syria, the US thinks they now number between19,000 to 25,000; however, the number of Daesh members in Libya has increased from 2,000 to 3,000 to around 5,000.

These numbers have led to increased calls for the Obama administration to amplify actions by the US military against Daesh in Libya.

AFP stated that the official, who wished to remain anonymous, said because of the continuing US-led air campaigns and travel restrictions place on the area have resulted in the Daesh’s dropping numbers in Iraq and Syria.

AFP then quoted the official as saying that it was a “combination of battlefield deaths, desertions, internal disciplinary actions, recruiting shortfalls and difficulties that foreign fighters face traveling into Syria.”

The Mediterranean city of Cirte, birthplace of former Libyan president Moammar Gadhafi, is already control by Daesh in Libya, a country that has been ruled by chaos since 2011 when the former dictator was expelled.

albawaba.com

A unit of the Libyan National Army stationed in the south-eastern oasis town of Kufra says that it has smashed a gang of rebel Sudanese gunmen from Darfur operating a checkpoint 200 kilometres north of the town.

LNA commander Abdurrahman Hashim is quoted as saying that his men launched a surprise attack on the Burazeg checkpoint yesterday, killing 20 members of the gang, capturing six and destroying five of their vehicles. Four soldiers from his Subul Assalam unit were injured in the operation, he stated.

A local Kufra council official added that the army was supported by air strikes.

The gunmen are claimed to have used the checkpoint to rob travellers hold them for ransom or even kill them. They are reported as being members of both the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) and the Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM). These are not the same, although one splinter group of the SLM joined with former members of JEM in 2010.

JEM, which became the major rebel force in Darfur at the height of the uprising there was backed by Qaddafi and during the revolution, it acted as his army in and around Kufra. According to a local Kufra council official, the gang moved into the area four months ago.

libyaherald.com

An ISIS [Daesh] commander Thursday succumbed to wounds which he had sustained during battles last week near Lebanon’s eastern border, a source told The Daily Star.

The source said that Khaled Mohammad al-Salem, who is known as Al-Hout (Arabic acronym for ‘the whale’), was smuggled into Lebanon after being critically wounded in battles near Lebanon’s border.

He was illegally admitted to a hospital in the western Bekaa for treatment.

Al-Qaeda-affiliate al-Nusra Front and ISIS had been engaged in fierce clashes on Arsal’s outskirts for a week over a territorial dispute which left several militants dead from each group. However, the fighting ended about two days ago following a truce.

On Wednesday, the Lebanese army killed six ISIS militants, including a commander, and arrested 16 others in the northeastern town of Arsal.

Lebanese troops, deployed around Arsal, have frequently clashed with ISIS and Nusra militants who briefly overran the town in August 2014 and captured a number of Lebanese soldiers and policemen, in the worst spillover of the Syria war into Lebanon.

albawaba.com

Several senior commanders from the so-called Islamic State have moved to Libya from Iraq and Syria in recent months, according to a top Libyan intelligence official.

The official told BBC Newsnight that increasing numbers of foreign fighters had arrived in the city of Sirte. Representatives from 23 countries, including the U.S. and UK, met in Rome on Tuesday, Feb 2, to discuss the growing threat from Islamic State (IS) in Libya.

IS took control of Sirte last year.

Disagreements between rival administrations in the country have hampered efforts to fight IS.

Islamic State took control of the city of Sirte last year. Sirte was the hometown of the former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. The Islamist group is believed to have received support from some loyalists of the former regime.

But Ismail Shukri, the head of intelligence in the city of Misrata, told Newsnight there had been an influx of foreign fighters in recent months.

“The majority [of IS fighters in Sirte] are foreigners, around 70%. Most of them are Tunisians, followed by Egyptians, Sudanese and a few Algerians. Add to that the Iraqis and the Syrians. Most of the Iraqis come from Saddam Hussein’s disbanded army,” he said.

Shukri said senior IS commanders were taking refuge in Libya, under pressure from international airstrikes in Iraq and Syria. “Some of their members, especially those with long-term importance to IS, are taking refuge here. They view Libya as a safe haven.”

Authorities in Misrata say they are preparing an offensive against Islamic State militants in Sirte. But in the town of Abugrein, 120km (75 miles) south of Misrata, the BBC saw little evidence of an imminent confrontation.

Abugrein represents the final line of defense against IS. Beyond that, IS controls the road east.

Commanders in Abugrein told Newsnight that their forces, loyal to the government in Tripoli, numbered around 1,400 – less than half the estimated strength of IS.

Mohammed al-Bayoudi, a commander with Battalion 166, acknowledged that, without international help, they would not be able to defeat IS.

“Certainly we would welcome NATO support. But air strikes alone cannot defeat IS. What the army really needs is logistical support,” Shukri said.

The prospect of international military involvement in Libya is a vexed topic. The United States has acknowledged that it has sent in small numbers of special forces on at least one occasion in recent weeks.

Similar groups from other NATO countries are also understood to be exploring potential local allies on the ground for a looming battle with IS.

But fighters in Abugrein said they did not want to see Western boots on the ground.

“We Libyans will fight. There is no need for foreign troops,” said al-Bayoudi.

Western governments, including the UK, are becoming increasingly concerned, and impatient.

A proposed Italian-led training force, with up to 6,000 troops from a number of NATO countries including the UK and France, has yet to be agreed.

A major stumbling block is a lack of consensus from Libya’s rival parliaments. A UN-brokered deal to create a unity government has stalled, amid opposition from both the Islamist-backed authorities in Tripoli and the internationally recognized government in Tobruk in the east.

panarmenian.net

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-35487145

The head of intelligence in the Libyan city of Misrata says several senior commanders from the so-called Islamic State group have moved to Libya where they are taking refuge.

bbc.com