A suicide bombing attempt in North Sinai’s al-Arish city was “thwarted” on Tuesday and the assailant was killed in a gunfire exchange, the Interior Ministry said.

The attacker was driving a car loaded with explosives during curfew hours and refused to adhere to security forces’ instructions at a checkpoint, the ministry said in a statement published on Facebook.

The driver charged at the security forces, despite warnings, the ministry said. He then proceeded to fire at security forces.

The assailant was killed in an ensuing gunfire exchange, which left one civilian injured.

Explosives experts found “large amounts” of explosives inside the car and that the deceased attacker was wearing an explosive belt.

The residential area surrounding the checkpoint was evacuated and the roads near it were closed off, to dismantle the explosive devices, the ministry added.

Militancy inside Egypt has seen a significant rise since the military ouster of Islamist President Mohamed Mursi in July 2013, following mass protests against his rule. Most attacks target security forces in North Sinai.

The Greek Coast Guard has seized a vessel Tuesday carrying ammunition and weapons near the southern island of Crete, authorities said, according to the Associated Press. The shipment is believed to be linked to the Islamic State group in Libya, according to local media reports. Authorities have not yet confirmed whether it was connected to the Islamic State group, also known by ISIS or ISIL, and said more information would be released later in the day.

Libya has become a hotbed for fighters with ISIS in recent months. The country has faced severe political turmoil since the 2011 uprising that toppled the government of long-time leader Muammar Ghaddafi. Split between two battling factions, Libya has become easy prey for ISIS.

The news comes as Europe is debating a solution to a growing refugee crisis. More than 300,000 migrants, most of them fleeing war in Syria, have flooded the EU’s borders in recent months.

#Greece Coastal Guard seize vessel off Crete loaded with arms. It is suspected to be linked to #IslamicState in #Libya ~@FlashNews_gr

— Yannis Koutsomitis (@YanniKouts) September 1, 2015

Pro-government forces have stepped up a campaign in recent weeks meant to oust the extremist militants from their country.

Earlier this week, Jihadists and government forces battled in Benghazi, Libya, where five pro-government fighters were killed in two days of violence, media reports said. At least four soldiers died and 22 were wounded Sunday in clashes with ISIS in the southern district of Hawari.

Greek Coast Guard Picks Up Nearly 2500 Migrants in 3 Days – New York Times http://t.co/pvpaSSl8ie #breakingnews #news

— Breaking News (@140BreakingNews) August 31, 2015

ISIS fighters planned to use Libya as a gateway to Europe, according to documents believed to be from ISIS and released by the British Quilliam Foundation, an organization meant to combat extremism, the Gatestone Institute reported. By posing as migrants on vessels passing into Europe, fighters in Libya would be able to quietly slip into Europe.

“The Mediterranean is becoming the world’s powder keg,” Toto Martello, a spokesman for the fishermen of the Italian island of Lompedusa, told the Gatestone Institute earlier this year. “We are frightened of our boats being boarded by terrorists,” Martello said.

Egypt’s Grand Mufti Shawky Allam, one of the country’s most senior religious authorities, denounced on Tuesday the Islamic State’s burning of four Iraqi Shia fighters earlier this week, describing it as “barbaric and cowardly.”

The group burnt alive four Iraqi victims by chaining them from their hands and feet and setting fire to a rope doused with petrol with a flame then engulfing their bodies.

The video of the incident showed the latest of a slew of grisly mass executions and atrocities committed by the Sunni radical group that controls large parts of Iraq and Syria.

“Such acts committed by the terrorist group contradict the principles of true Islam and the path of the Prophet [Mohammed] and contravene all international norms and laws,” Allam said.

Allam, who issues the country’s religious edicts, urged the international community to work together to eradicate the “epidemic” of terrorist groups like the Islamic State and their brutal crimes.

Earlier this year, Islamic State fighters beheaded 20 Egyptian Christians in Libya. In February, Egyptian jet fighters bombed IS group targets near the the eastern coastal city of Derna in Libya.

http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/1/64/139401/Egypt/Politics-/Egypts-senior-Islamic-cleric-denounces-IS-groups-b.aspx

Islamic State militants have claimed a car bomb attack on the Mellitah oil and gas firm, co-owned by Italy’s ENI, in the Libyan capital on Monday, a statement on social media said on Tuesday.

The attack caused only minor damage to the headquarters of Mellitah in central Tripoli.

Mounds of ocher-colored soil dot the horizon. The embankment, still loose, shows that the trench is fresh. We can’t get too close as the place has been declared a “closed military area.”

In Ras Ajdir, the last Tunisian position before the Libyan coastline, there has been an unusual amount of activity involving excavators over the past few weeks. Tunisia has decided to dig a trench filled with saltwater and topped with a sand dune to protect itself from perils on the Libyan side of the border. Designed to spread across 168 kilometers — of the 520 kilometers of shared border — the wall signals a break in the history of this porous Tunisian-Libyan zone, which has long been open to all kinds of traffic.

Tunis decided to build the wall after the June 28 terror attack on the El Kantaoui beach resort, near Sousse, in which 38 foreign tourists were killed. The attacker, a young Tunisian, had been trained in a Libyan camp, according to Tunisian authorities. That was also the case for the two attackers who killed 21 foreign visitors at the Bardo Museum in Tunis on March 18.

Faced with this unprecedented terrorist offensive targeting one of the pillars of its economy — tourism — Tunis says it must plug it porous border with Libya, which it sees as the central source of the problem.

The project is very delicate. Libyan authorities have taken offense, denouncing the “unilateral decision.” And discontent is simmering among those on both sides of the border living on smuggled goods. As a sign of its embarrassment, the Tunisian government has avoided using the term “wall,” instead preferring the euphemism “obstacle.” Whatever you call it, the new face of the Tunisia-Libya border is highly controversial.

About 100 kilometers away from Ras Ajdir, the Tunisian town of Medenine — the capital of the eponymous governorate that runs along the northern part of the border — has been buzzing with contention. On one particular day, a Libyan delegation was passing through the city for a previously scheduled meeting to explore integrating communities on both sides of the border more deeply. Evidence of the wall could not have come at a more inopportune time.

“Why erect this wall when one was brought down between the two Germanies?” asks Salim Grira Mzioui, a local council representative of Wazen, a Libyan village along the border. “This will pose insurmountable problems. There are farmers cultivating land on both sides. There are also camel herds coming and going.”

Mzioui says the wall will put an end to ancestral traditions of border communities that have long ignored the state line artificially dividing entire tribes. “We’re going to divide a people,” adds Adel Arjoun, a Tunisian hotel owner from Medenine.

Juicy trafficking

In Medenine or in Ben Gardane, the closest town to the border, it’s easy enough to find supporters of the wall. “The Tunisian government has the right to protect its borders for national security reasons, but it has to make people understand that the wall isn’t directed against them,” says Said Lamloun, a lawyer and representative of the Tunisian Human Rights League in Ben Gardane.

This is no simple task. Neglected for decades, as economic strategy gave priority to the coast, the people of inland Tunisia survived on smuggling with Libya to the east and with Algeria to the west. Because Libyan oil bought at the border costs half of what people pay at the pump in Tunisia, trafficking can prove to be quite lucrative. The evidence is in the container stalls and makeshift gas stations placed every 100 meters on the region’s roads.

“This wall is against us, against our people, against our food, against the Tunisian south,” says Moncef Ali (not his real name). With a stern look on his face, the Medenine bazaar shopkeeper sits on a stool surrounded by textile products imported from China, India and Turkey — all smuggled through neighboring Libya. “The government in Tunis is punishing the south for terrorist affairs that have nothing to do with us,” he adds.

A detachment of the National Popular Army (ANP) special troops killed one terrorist and recovered ammunition, following an ambush on Friday in Sidi Bel Abbes (west of Algiers), said Saturday a statement from the Ministry of National Defence (MND).

“Following the exploitation of information, a detachment of special troops of the National Popular Army (ANP) under the operational area of Sidi Bel Abbes (2nd military region) killed one terrorist, on 28 August 2015 at 4:00 PM, at the locality of Moulay Slissen,” the source added.

“The dangerous criminal is named Abdou Chikh, nicknamed Talha, having joint the terrorist groups in 1993,” the source indicated while noting that  “the operation resulted in the recovery of one Kalachnikov machine gun and two loaded chargers.”

On the same day, and in separate operations, 64 smugglers of African nationalities were arrested in Bordj Badji Mokhtar and In Guezzam (6th Military Region) by members of the National Popular Army (ANP), who also seized a car and quantities of products for smuggling, the statement said.

“One all-terrain vehicle, loaded with 165 tonnes of sugar, 15 hammer drills, 20 generators, 13 mobile phones and 11,000 DZD were seized,” the ministry said.

http://www.aps.dz/en/algeria/8381-army-kills-one-terrorist,-recovers-ammunitions-in-sidi-bel-abbes

Four Libyan soldiers were killed and six wounded in fresh fighting with Islamist groups in the eastern city of Benghazi on Sunday, medics and military officials said.

Forces loyal to Libya’s internationally recognised government have been fighting Islamist groups in the country’s second-largest city Benghazi since last year, part of a wider struggle since Muammar Gaddafi was overthrown in 2011.

A tank battalion fought with Islamist brigades which had been trying to advance in the west of Benghazi, military officials said. Fighting raged until late in the evening.

Army forces backed by armed residents have regained some areas in Benghazi lost last year. But critics say their outdated war planes and helicopters lacking precision guns have damaged parts of the city without gaining much on the ground.

There was also fighting on Sunday between army units loyal to the official government and Islamic State outside the city of Derna to the east of Benghazi.

The air force flew a strike against Islamic State positions outside Derna, said a military spokesman. Both sides also clashed with ground forces in the same area.

Islamic State started this month an offensive to try retake Derna after a rival Islamist group had expelled it in June. Army forces are based outside Derna but have not tried to take the city, a jihadi hotspot.

The fighting on several fronts highlights the chaos in Libya, where armed groups back two governments vying for control. The official prime minister has been based in the east since the capital, Tripoli, was seized by a rival group which set up its own government.

Both sides command loose coalitions of former anti-Gaddafi rebels which have split along political, regional and tribal lines.

Islamic State has exploited the chaos by taking over several places, executing foreigners and launching attacks against embassies in Tripoli.

As a civil war raging throughout Libya, the now anarchic North African country has become a focal transit point for illegal immigrants eyeing for Europe, and that might deepen the current migrant crisis, analysts warned on Sunday, after a series of shipwrecks claiming hundreds of lives.

Nearly 200 illegal immigrants are feared dead off Libya’s western Zuwara coast Thursday after a boat overcrowded with 400 people sank en route to Italy. 82 bodies have washed ashore, while around 100 people are missing as Libyan coast guards still searching for bodies and potential survivors.

UN envoy to Libya Bernardino Leon on Friday urged Libyan authorities to take every possible means to curb the migrant crisis.

“So many lives, so many young people, so much hope lost at sea.” Leon said.

Despite the great global concern, such life-sucking shipwrecks are seen as daily occurrences off Libya’s coastal cities.

Libyan official news agency LANA reported that on July 17 alone, around 2,700 illegal immigrants have been rescued off the Libyan coast as they were attempting to reach European coasts.

Some migrants pay thousands of U.S. dollars for the land and sea passage with smugglers. The migrant ships, most in poor conditions, with no sufficient food and water, sounded distress signal right after they entered the international waters and waited for rescue team from European countries, a diplomatic source who decline to disclose his name told Xinhua.

He added the migrants risked their lives for the mere hope they would be saved and transported to Europe and start a better life.

According to a UN report, around 170,000 illegal immigrants crossed the Mediterranean into Italy in 2014. Among them, 85 percent started their journey from Libya. The stowaways are mainly from Southern Sahara, and some are from Pakistan, Morocco, Syria, and Iraq.

Mansur Al-Shokri, professor of political sciences in Tripoli University, blamed the failed political process for the migrant crisis. He said after the downfall former leader Muammar Gaddafi has left Libya with a security vacuum, the lawless country has become an “ideal” place for the migrants,

The once oil-rich country is now juggling two rival parliaments and governments, with Tripoli controlled by Islamist-backed Libya Dawn forces, and the internationally recognized government operating in the eastern town of Tobruk.

Shokri said the clashes between different factions clearly shred the country into pieces since the demise of the former strong central government, and therefore, it’s nearly impossible to set concentrate forces to protect the borders.

“Apparently, all Libyan borders are now unsecured due to a lack of security measures. Many immigrants come from southern African Sahara and some neighboring Arab countries.” Shokri said.

The EU earlier in May had asked a UN mandate permitting military force to halt illegal immigration from the country following some tragedies on the Mediterranean that drowned a total of 750 migrants. The proposal was later rejected by UN.

Polisario’s Front security forces in the Tindouf camps have allegedly coordinated an unprecedented act of disobedience, refusing to obey orders from their “Saharawi Minister of the Interior”.

Security forces have coordinated this act as a reaction to a decision by the “Saharawi Minister of the Interior” Hama Salama, prohibiting them from operating outside their scope of action, namely the “wilayas” (districts) where they are supposed to be confined.

Multiple media reports in the Tindouf camps said Hama Salama made this decision based on suspicions that some of their own security forces were linked to organized crime networks and drug trafficking, as well as the smuggling of weapons and cars.

A report by Future Sahara said the security services have refused to implement Hama Salama’scommand.

A number of media reports agree this is an unusual rebellion by security personnel against the Supervision Department and, by extension, it is a revolt against the General Secretariat of the Polisario Front.

http://www.moroccoworldnews.com/2015/08/166695/polisarios-security-forces-disobey-orders-causing-a-revolt-in-tindouf-camps/