Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the Daesh group (ISIL/ISIS) has reportedly moved from Turkey to Libya, having chosen the group’s North African stronghold Sirte, the hometown of the late Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, as his new residence, according to the Iranian news agency FARS.

A Russian advanced kilo-class submarine has entered the Mediterranean Sea near the Syrian coast, a source in Russia’s ministry of defense told Interfax, cited by Russia Today. The Rostov-on-Don diesel-electric submarine was reportedly equipped with cruise missiles, similar to those used by Russian warships targeting the Islamic State group.

The Russian defense ministry neither confirmed nor denied the reports, according to Russia Today. In November, the same submarine also allegedly struck ISIS targets in the group’s stronghold city of Raqqa, Russia Today reported. In October, cruise missiles were fired from the Caspian Sea, targeting ISIS strongholds.

Moscow began airstrikes against ISIS in Syria on Sept. 30. The following month, ISIS fighters claimed that they downed Russia’s Metrojet flight 9268, headed from Sharm el-Sheikh resort in Egypt to St. Petersburg over the Sinai peninsula in Egypt. All 224 people on board died in the crash.

According to the Russia Today report, the Rostov-on-Don submarine is also known as ‘Improved Kilo’ under a NATO code name. The submarine is considered to be the first trade-off model in the third generation submarines of the Varshavyanka class. The submarine, one of the quietest in the world, also possesses an extended combat range. It holds a 52-man crew and can stay 45 days in water without needing to dock. The submarine is also relatively small, allowing it to steer in shallow waters.

The submarine, which weighs up to 4,000 tons and travels underwater at 20 knots an hour, can remain undetected, earning it the name of the “black hole” from NATO.

ibtimes.com

An Islamic State (ISIS)-affiliated group may have taken the upper hand in the ongoing struggle for power in the Sinai desert and Gaza, a report revealed Monday.

The Sinai has recently witnessed some of the heaviest fighting between security forces and Islamists since the army ousted President Mohammed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood in 2013.

Since then, Egypt has waged war on terror in the region – including against Hamas, which has close ties to the Brotherhood – and seized a Hamas weapons cache there this past summer, Yediot Aharonot reports.

But just a few days after Egyptian forces seized the convoy of arms for Gaza, Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis – the Sinai group which pledged allegiance to ISIS last year – mounted a large-scale attack against Egyptian forces using weapons similar to the cache, sources revealed to the daily.

Analysts estimate that the group seized the Hamas weapons convoy shortly after Egypt acquired the cache, and then used them for their own ends despite telling Hamas the cache had been destroyed.

The revelation surfaces just days after ISIS’s Sinai commander entered Gaza for talks with Hamas. Hamas is being aided by ISIS in order to smuggle in weapons through the cross-border tunnels that Egypt’s army has not yet destroyed, and in return is providing Sinai Province with advanced weapons such as Cornet anti-tank missiles which ISIS has used in Sinai against Egypt – including against an Egyptian patrol ship.

In July, Israel announced it had information that Hamas had supplied ISIS with the weapons it used in a particularly brutal attack on Egyptian soldiers that left over 70 dead. Likewise, Hamas commanders were revealed as having supplied organizational support in the attack.

Days after the revelation, a senior IDF officer said Hamas was cooperating with Sinai Peninsula to keep its influx of weapons going through smuggling tunnels, and prepare for its next war against Israel.

inn.com

NATO is ready to help a future national unity government in Libya but remains opposed to any military intervention in the war-torn country, alliance chief Jens Stoltenberg said in an interview published Sunday.

“If a national unity government is formed, we are ready to help it and provide assistance,” Stoltenberg said in an interview with Italy’s Repubblica and several other European newspapers ahead of an international conference on Libya in Rome next Sunday. However, “we are not discussing a major new military operation in Libya, and I will not be recommending it,” he said.

His remarks were published just hours before Libya’s warring factions, who are holding talks in Tunisia, said they had reached an agreement on ending the political deadlock that has plagued the country since Muammar Qaddafi’s overthrow.

Former colonial power Italy will host the Dec. 13 conference which is aimed at preventing Libya’s total collapse and halting the advance of the extremist Daesh group.

Experts have warned that Daesh has been shifting to Libya as the world focuses on its traditional power bases in Iraq and Syria, taking advantage of the chaos as rival militias and governments battle for power.

arabnews.com

inn.com

French military aircraft have carried out reconnaissance and intelligence flights over areas controlled by Islamic State in Libya and plan to carry out further missions over the north African state, a presidential press document showed on Friday.

According to a press dossier provided ahead of President Francois Hollande’s visit to the Charles de Gaulle aircraft carrier off the coast of Syria, two missions were carried out on Nov. 20 and 21 around the towns of Sirte and Tobruk.

The missions would be the first time Paris has publicly acknowledged carrying out operations over Islamic State zones in Libya. Sirte is controlled by Islamic State.

“Other intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance flights are also planned,” the document showed.

Neither the Defence Ministry nor president’s office were immediately available for comment.

thehindu.com

Tunisian President Beji Caid Essebsi cancelled his scheduled trip to Switzerland Wednesday in the wake of the bombing of a bus carrying presidential security guards on Tuesday, 23 November, killing 13 of those on board and wounding more than ten others.

The incident, claimed by Islamic State (IS), trained attention on the danger of terrorist elements returning to Tunisia from various regional hot spots, whether in neighbouring Libya, Syria or Iraq.

The suicide bombing, on Mohamed V Street in Tunis, delivered a new blow to stability in the country, still emerging from the delicate interim period following the overthrow of the Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali regime.

The Tunisian Ministry of Interior announced that, using fingerprints, it has identified all of presidential guard members who were killed in the blast. The 13th body is presumed to be the terrorist who carried out the attack. The ministry said that the attacker used a backpack or jacket filled without 10 kilos of military-grade explosives.

The following day, IS claimed responsibility for the attack. In a statement released on a pro-IS social networking site, the terrorist organisation said that the perpetrator, whom it named as Abu Abdullah Al-Tunsi, managed to board the bus as it travelled along Mohamed V Street in downtown Tunis. “When he reached his destination, he detonated his explosive belt in order to kill about 20 security elements,” the statement said.

In the aftermath of the attack, the Tunisian parliament summoned Prime Minister Habib Essid to discuss the security situation in the country and efforts being taken to fight terrorism. The Tunisian National Security Council had already instituted several urgent measures.

Borders with Libya were closed for 15 days as of midnight 25 November, surveillance was intensified on persons suspected of jihadist links, social networking pages linked with terrorism were banned, and security screening was tightened on persons returning from Syria, Libya and Iraq. Tunisian authorities have also begun to scrutinise the legal status of foreigners residing in the country and to tighten all land, air and sea borders.

The bloody attack in the nation’s capital triggered appeals for a more effective and comprehensive strategy to combat terrorism. Political parties and NGOs called for “national unity” and to unify ranks behind security forces and the army in their war against terrorism. Politicians and government officials lashed out at the deteriorating state of security in Libya, which has become a source of IS operatives who infiltrate into Tunisia to carry out terrorist attacks.

Rafik Chelli, the minister in charge of security, blamed Libya for the deterioration of security in Tunisia. “All the terrorist operations carried out in this country were planned in Libya,” he said in an interview on a local radio station. “Everything is prepared in Libya. The leaders of the Tunisian terrorist groups are there in Libya.”

According to other security officials, the explosive substances used in the recent attack were smuggled into the country from Libya.

Chelli said the perpetrators of two earlier attacks in Tunisia, one against the Bardo Museum and the other against a tourist hotel in Sousse, had gone to Libya where they received training.

“We know the places and the training centres. They receive ideological indoctrination and military training,” he said, adding that Tunisian jihadists go to Libya and return “secretly via smugglers.” Once back in the country, “they await the day when they receive instruction and arms, and carry out the operation.” He added, “There is an alliance between smugglers and terrorism [in Tunisia].”

Security demands in the aftermath of the attack have upped the pressure on the Habib Essid government, already strained by tensions in the government coalition led by the Nidaa Tounes (Call of Tunisia) Party. Some Tunisian politicians criticised the security measures taken by the government in the aftermath of the attack. A more comprehensive and effective strategy is required, they said.

At a general session dedicated to the discussion of the 2016 national budget and attended by Essid, MP Ahmed Al-Sadiq said, “We are with national unity and behind the government at this difficult moment. But we believe that our people had been expecting more measures.” He said that there were “strategic decisions” that the government had not yet taken with regard to restructuring the security system and reviewing the plan for the redeployment of the military.

Another MP, Abdel Latif Mekki, who represents the Islamist Ennahda movement, the second-largest bloc in parliament and a partner in the government coalition, called for a national antiterrorism conference.

Observers noted his conciliatory tone and suggested that this is an indication that Ennahda does not want to take escalate the situation to gain advantage over the ruling Nidaa Tounes Party, which is reeling under internal rifts that could lead to a collapse of the current government.

President Essebsi, in a national address Sunday evening, appealed for a halt to strikes and other demonstrations as a way to help in the fight against terror and strengthen the social peace. He also urged Nidaa Tounes to overcome the internal rifts that threaten to divide the party.

“The economy in Tunis is in a difficult state. It is essential that we emerge from this condition by attracting foreign investment as well as domestic investment. But this can not be achieved until we create the conditions conducive to this and the appropriate climate,” he said.

Essebsi acknowledged that his party, the largest in Tunisia, is in the grips of a “leadership crisis.” That leadership, he said, lacks a culture of dialogue and has not taken into consideration the critical state of affairs in the country or Tunisia’s image abroad.

It has also ignored “the slogan that we have adopted for our movement: ‘The nation comes before political parties.’” He went on to say that the crisis in the party has reached the point where he feels he has to intervene, leading him to chose 13 people to act as intermediaries between the two camps that are fighting over control over the party.

Essebsi’s speech and, in particular, his bid to intervene in the party’s internal dispute triggered harsh criticisms across social networking sites and elsewhere in the media. Many critics were angered by the fact that he, in his capacity as president, had devoted the greater portion of the televised address to his party, at a time when the country was in a state of emergency and greater Tunis was under curfew.

Tunisian Minister of Interior Najem Gharsalli was also summoned to parliament to discuss the security situation and the budget for his ministry. His ministry’s antiterrorism strategy is founded on three principles: prevention, protection and reaction.

The “prevention” plan enabled security authorities to pre-empt 13 terrorist attacks that “were more dangerous than the terrorist operation that occurred last Tuesday,” he said. He added that the Sousse attack could have had even more disastrous consequences than it had.

Gharsalli also said that the government has approved a 180 billion dinar budget increase for the Interior Ministry. He said that 10 million dinars are earmarked for border surveillance and control equipment and up to 90 million dinars will be spent to buy sophisticated equipment and advanced technology needed by special anti-terrorist units. Another 8.6 million dinars will be allocated for the training and formation of security personnel for various divisions.

According to Gharsalli, the Interior Ministry has also been allocated funds for construction of a state-of-the-art operations room. Estimated to cost 16 million dinars, the facility will contain a live broadcast studio to support the security agencies’ media performance. The project will be carried out in collaboration with friendly nations such as France, Britain and the US.

He added that the Tunisian government is determined to halt the phenomenon of “moles in sovereign institutions”, suggesting that there are security personnel who are suspected of belonging to terrorist organisations or who harbour extremist tendencies.

On Saturday evening, parliament approved the Interior Ministry allocations for the 2016 budget. It will receive 2.9 billion dinars, which is up 7.6 per cent from Interior Ministry allocations in 2015.

ahram.org

Shadi al-Menei, the commander of the Islamic State (ISIS) branch Sinai Province, is currently in Gaza on a secret visit to speak with Hamas leaders.

The surprising revelation reported late Thursday by Channel 2 exposes the deep level of coordination between the terrorist organizations, which has been kept tightly under wraps.

Al-Menei held talks with the heads of Hamas’s “armed wing,” the Al-Qassam Brigades, about expanding the cooperation between the groups according to the report.

The channel notes that Hamas is being aided by ISIS in order to smuggle in weapons through the cross-border tunnels that Egypt’s army has not yet destroyed, and in return is providing Sinai Province with advanced weapons such as Cornet anti-tank missiles which ISIS has used in Sinai against Egypt – including against an Egyptian patrol ship.

The head of Sinai Province, which was called Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis before pledging loyalty to ISIS, has been a wanted man in Egypt for several years. Last May it was thought that he had been eliminated, but later it emerged that he survived the attempt.

Al-Menei is responsible for the terrorist attack on Highway 12 in 2011, in which nine Israelis were murdered. He also orchestrated rocket fire on Eilat, Israel’s southernmost port city.

Back in July Israel announced it had information that Hamas had supplied ISIS with the weapons it used in a particularly brutal attack on Egyptian soldiers that left over 70 dead. Likewise, Hamas commanders were revealed as having supplied organizational support in the attack.

Days after the revelation, a senior IDF officer said Hamas was cooperating with Sinai Peninsula to keep its influx of weapons going through smuggling tunnels, and prepare for its next war against Israel.

Hamas, for its part, repeatedly rejected announcements by Israel that it is aiding ISIS, which is also gaining a foothold in Gaza itself through local Salafist groups voicing support for ISIS. Those groups are in conflict with Hamas, but are also not official branches of ISIS like Sinai Province is.

“Hamas is fighting ISIS in the Strip, but on the other side there is cooperation between Hamas elements from Gaza and ISIS in Sinai,” Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon (Likud) explained in July.

inn.com

The Islamic State group has built a base in Libya from which to exploit tribal conflicts and expand across Africa, though experts say the jihadists remain vulnerable even if the West’s attention is elsewhere.

Libya’s collapse into a chaotic mess of competing militias since the overthrow and death of dictator Muammar Gaddhafi has made it an ideal stomping ground for ISIS.

ISIS jihadists gradually built up control of several towns that were of minimal interest to other militias, most notably Gaddhafi’s coastal home town of Sirte, east of Tripoli.

Libya not only offers an alternative base if the group is forced out of Syria and Iraq, experts fear it could also take advantage of tribal conflicts to expand south into the Sahel desert region of central Africa, particularly Chad, Niger and Sudan.

“ISIS is provoking tensions and making alliances,” particularly between the competing Tuareg and Toubou tribes, said Kader Abderrahim of the Institute of Strategic and International Relations in Paris.

For now, ISIS has only a limited foothold in Libya, but it is enough to project violence into neighbouring countries, particularly Tunisia where the group has claimed three attacks this year.

“Tunisia is the most threatened,” said Abderrahim. “The terrorists cannot accept the idea of a functioning democracy just a few dozen kilometres away.”

Libya also lies just 800km across the Mediterranean from Italy, and is a route for thousands of refugees — another weakness ISIS could exploit.

“There is still this old historical fantasy of reconquering territory they held in Spain… of returning Andalucia to before the Middle Ages,” Abderrahim said.

A tough environment

Libya nonetheless represents a much less hospitable environment for ISIS than Syria and Iraq.

“Libya without a state is not really a functioning place. ISIS in Libya would be vulnerable to the same problems as the Gaddhafi regime – including the need to import 70% of its food – and there’s a much smaller population from which to extort revenue and taxes,” said Geoff Porter, head of the US-based North Africa Risk Consultancy.

“Were they to be eradicated in Syria and Iraq, they could try to relocate the bulk of their activities to Libya, but they would be a potentially more manageable threat.”

Libya’s long coastline and desert plains leave ISIS vulnerable to outside attack, said Frederic Wehrey, a senior associate with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace who visited several cities there in September.

But as in Syria and Iraq, the problem for the West is finding partners on the ground to fight ISIS.

“The Libyan actors that are capable of confronting the Islamic State are not really doing so for reasons of capacity but also of will,” Wehrey said.

“They’re holding the line, but both the main factions have other priorities.”

Libya has two governments vying for power – a militia alliance including Islamists that overran Tripoli in August 2014, and the internationally recognised administration that fled to eastern Libya.

Western efforts have focused on fostering a reconciliation between the two sides, hoping they will then turn their firepower on ISIS and other jihadist groups, but months of UN-brokered talks have made little progress.

For now, ISIS has been held in check by the “super-abundance” of armed opponents in the country, Porter said.

It was driven out of the city of Derna in June by an Al-Qaeda affiliate and is jostling for control in other areas.

“It is not threatening the entire country,” added Wehrey. “But it has a beach-head and the human catastrophe of the civil war is fertile ground for them to expand.

“We are already seeing jihadists from older groups defecting to the Islamic State, which has a powerful brand.”

Western reluctance

Despite the threat, there is little chance the West will intervene in Libya any time soon while attention is almost entirely focused on Syria.

Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi has been one of the few leaders to focus on Libya, warning last week that it could be the “next emergency”.

The United States has been quietly targeting IS in the country, claiming to have killed its Libyan leader, Abu Nabil, with a drone strike on a compound in Derna on November 13.

But ramping up its military involvement remains highly unlikely with the US presidential election less than a year away, Porter said.

The Republicans have been desperately seeking to tarnish leading Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton over her handling of the Libya crisis while she was secretary of state – particularly the death of US ambassador Christopher Stevens in 2012.

“With Clinton as frontrunner, the White House will avoid anything that will propel Libya to the front of the news cycle,” said Porter.

news24.com