Tunisia’s parliament on Saturday overwhelmingly approved legislation allowing the death penalty for those convicted on terrorism charges after Islamist militant attacks that killed dozens of foreign visitors in the past few months.

Last month, a gunman killed 38 mostly British tourists in the Tunisian seaside city of Sousse. In March, two gunmen killed 21 foreign tourists and a policeman at Tunis’ Bardo Museum.Both attacks were claimed by the Islamic State jihadist group.

MPs approved the bill by a margin of 174-0 with 10 abstentions early on Saturday after three days of debate in what parliament speaker Mohamed Ennaceur called an “extraordinary effort” to make the North African country a safer place.

Human Rights Watch had criticised the bill, which also eases arrests of suspects, saying it “would open the way top rosecuting political dissent as terrorism, give judges overly broad powers, and curtail lawyers’ ability to provide an effective defence”.

The bill, which had been debated in parliament for years but put forward after the Sousse attack, will replace a law from 2003 which then-president Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, toppled in a popular uprising in 2011, had used to crush dissent.

The new “law against terrorism and money laundering” permits the death penalty for terrorism-related offences such as killings of foreign visitors or someone enjoying “international protection”, a reference to diplomats.

Tunisia has undergone a largely peaceful transition to democracy since its 2011 popular uprising. But its army has been fighting a rise in Islamist militancy. Tunisia is especially concerned about militants entering from adjacent Libya, where Islamic State has established a toehold amid chaos caused by two rival governments battling for control, leaving a security vacuum.

Tunisia says it has started building a wall and trench along the insecure 168 km (105 miles) of its frontier with Libya. The Sousse gunman obtained training with militants in Libya beforecarrying out his attack.

On Thursday, security forces killed an Islamist militant and arrested 13 in a security operation in the northern state of Bizerte, the interior ministry said. Three more were arrested during raids on homes of suspected militants on Friday.

ISIS militants have exploited widespread chaos to gain a foothold in Libya, but their ejection from an eastern city suggests they may not achieve a Iraq-style takeover due to strong local rivals and the absence of sectarian divisions.

Last month, local Islamist fighters reinforced by local civilians ousted ISIS from Derna on Libya’s eastern Mediterranean coast, one of two bastions the militants had established in the North African oil-producing country.

It was the first setback in Libya for the ultraviolent militant movement that has sent in combatants and preachers from Tunisia, Yemen and other Arab states to try repeat its success in Iraq and Syria, where it has captured vast territories and proclaimed a “caliphate” based on medieval religious precepts.

ISIS has benefited from Libya’s anarchy. Two rival governments are fighting each other and unable to gain the upper hand while former rebel groups that helped topple Moammar Gadhafi in 2011 compete for power, creating a security vacuum.

But ISIS was driven out of Derna after seven people were killed at a protest against the influx of foreign militants and the killing of a commander of the local Abu Salim Martyrs Brigade, allied with a former anti-Gadhafi militia in the town.

A number of angry residents joined the Abu Salim Martyrs to help them expel ISIS from Derna, an Islamist hotspot even during Gaddafi’s 42-year rule in which he suppressed political Islam.

Sunni ISIS has drawn considerable grassroots support in Iraq and Syria by milking long-standing Sunni-Shiite sectarian enmities. But this does not work in Libya, an exclusively Sunni country where local Sunni armed factions and tribes regard ISIS as an infiltrator and competitor.

“People had had enough of ISIS,” a Derna resident said. “The Abu Salim Brigade has enjoyed some support going back to the [anti-Gadhafi] revolution.”

Mattia Toaldo, policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said ISIS would now probably focus on its other Libya power base – Sirte, Gadhafi’s hometown on the country’s central coast where ISIS has won unusual support from Gadhafi loyalists opposed to Libya’s jostling new rulers.

ISIS insurgents have attacked oil fields south of the central city and kidnapped some nine foreign workers. They also executed 21 Egyptian Christians near Sirte and stormed a luxury hotel in the capital Tripoli, killing five foreigners.

Toaldo said he expected the militants would try to set up checkpoints at a strategic central junction where the east-west coastal highway links with a passage to Sabha, a city in Libya’s far southern desert. “They would be able to ask for a lot of protection money [there],” he said.

Unlike in Iraq and Syria, ISIS has been unable to earn millions by selling oil on the black market because it is dominated by Libyans. ISIS therefore relies on ransoms paid for abducted prisoners and on state salaries paid to local members in Libya, where most adults remain on the state payroll.

ISIS might also try tap into grievances in the impoverished south. Neither rival government has any authority in the remote, desolate area where dozens have been killed since last week in clashes between two tribes, the Tuareg and Tebu.

“ISIS-linked militants may seek to take advantage of feelings of marginalization in the southwest, particularly among members of the Tuareg ethnic group, to recruit fighters and hold territory,” said Geoffrey Howard, Middle East and North Africa analyst at London-based Global Risk Analysis.

As for Derna, ISIS has confirmed in a video that it has pulled out its fighters. But the fighting is not over yet. Military units loyal to Libya’s internationally recognized government based in the east since losing control of Tripoli a year ago to a rival group said they had now surrounded Derna.

“Islamic State aren’t many and they don’t have petrol to move around,” said local military spokesman Abdul Karim Sabra, using the militant group’s latest name. “They don’t have military vehicles either. They get around in fertilizer trucks.”

But clashes between ISIS and eastern army units aligned with the internationally recognized government outside Derna, and several car bombs going off inside the city, killing 10 people and blamed by residents on ISIS, suggest the military encirclement has not been effective.

ISIS can always seek refuge in the Green Mountain hinterland – a hideout for independence hero Omar al-Mukhtar for years when fighting the then-Italian colonial regime.

Since the eastern army units and the Abu Salim fighters treat each other as enemies, and as long as these regional military forces do not try to venture into Derna, it may well remain a playground for radical Islamists.

“It’s a crowded field,” said Frederic Wehrey, senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

“Everything in Libya is fragmented, everything is localized, so it’s difficult for any group to expand.”

It also remains to be seen whether life will improve for people in Derna. “Shops and banks have reopened [since ISIS pulled out] but there is lack of medicine in hospitals,” said the local resident, who asked not to be named for his own safety.

The Algerian military blog ‘Secret Difa3’ published the first photos of the new air defense system of the Algerian armed forces, identified as the Russian S-400.

Italian Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni said the EU is considering individual sanctions against “hardliners” in Libya who oppose the signing of a UN-sponsored power-sharing agreement reached in Morocco.

Gentiloni said the “hypothesis” of sanctions against “three to four” individuals who oppose the peace process could go into effect if there aren’t changes among certain factions in Tripoli, despite the fact that there was support for the process from “most” members from Libya.

“Eleven of the 13 mayors and many militias are in favor of the peace process,” Gentiloni said.

“Still, there has been a strong and threatening pressure from some hardliners against the possibility that there could be positive discussion in Tripoli,” he said, referring to those individuals against whom sanctions might be imposed if they continued their opposition.

Four years after a revolution in Libya ousted dictator Muammar Gaddafi, two opposing governments are fighting for control of the oil-rich country where ISIS is gaining a foothold.

The conflict is pushing many Libyans to flee to European shores, causing an immigration crisis, especially for countries in close proximity such as Italy.

Islamic State has kidnapped three African Christians in eastern Libya, the group said, publishing their passport pictures.

The men come from Egypt, Nigeria and Ghana, Islamic State said in a statement on social media, without elaborating.

The kidnapping took place in Noufliyah, an Islamic State stronghold southeast of the city of Sirte, said a resident, asking not to be named.

Mohamed El Hejazi, a military spokesman loyal to the internationally recognised government based in the east, also said the abduction happened in the small town.

The militant group has expanded in the North African country by exploiting chaos and a security vacuum like it did in Iraq and Syria.

Islamic State militants have beheaded dozens and attacked foreign missions in Tripoli, while also fighting forces loyal to Libya’s two government.

The official government has been based in the east since losing control of the capital Tripoli a year ago when a rival group called Libya Dawn seized it, setting up its own parliament and government.

Algerian army killed 16 armed militants affiliated to al-Qaida on Sunday, apparently in response to one of the deadliest militant attacks in months last week that claimed lives of at least nine Algerian soldiers, according to local media.

The army operation was launched to track down a terrorist group affiliated to al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb in the province of Ain Defla, about 145 km south east of the capital Algiers.

The army troops managed to surround the assailants and killed 16 of them, also retrieving a load of arms, local El Khabar newspaper said.

The killed militants were believed to have ambushed an army detachment in the upper woods of Ain Defla on Friday, killing at least nine soldiers and wounding two others, according to the Ministry of Defense. It’s one of the most lethal attacks in months.

Algeria is currently a key western ally in the Middle East region in fighting the Islamic State (IS) group which has controlled swaths of Iraq and parts of Syria.

Both al-Qaida-allied fighters and their rival militants who have declared loyalty to the IS are active in remote mountainous areas across the country.