The Libyan eastern-based army said that fighter jets have launched airstrikes on Chadian armed groups in southern Libya after the army’s deadline for African migrants to leave the south.

“After the deadline, the operations began to secure southern Libya based on the mandate of the General Command. Air force began today to comprehensively enforce law and respond to terrorism and criminal operations and armed gangs, by carrying out the first combat airstrike targeting 10 vehicles south of Harug Mountains,” the army said in a statement.

The army also confirmed that airstrikes were carried out on Sunday targeting vehicles of Chadian opposition in Libya.

On March 9, the army set March 17 deadline for nationals from neighboring African countries to leave southern Libya in order to curb the erupting violence there, warning they would be removed by force.

The army also called on tribal elders and leaders in southern Libya to stop social support for all those who “help in any way protect or house African nationals, leading to destabilization of southern Libya.”

The city of Sabha, located some 800 km southwest of capital Tripoli, has recently been witnessing violent clashes between rival tribes that killed and injured dozens of civilians and forced hundreds of families to flee their homes.

People from Chad, Niger and Sudan have been accused of involvement in the conflicts in Sabha. Hamed Al-Khiali, head of the municipal council of Sabha, said last month that the local airport was occupied by “an armed group that has nothing to do with Libya,” carrying flags of other African countries.

Recently in Tripoli, the UN-backed government announced measures to support its forces in Sabha to fight the so-called “mercenaries.”

Egypt’s military says four troops and 36 Islamic militants have died in the past five days of fighting in the restive Sinai Peninsula, like reported by foxnews.com.

Monday’s statement says one officer was among the four killed army personnel. It also says that eight soldiers were wounded, including two officers.

The military says that it also destroyed 400 hideouts, munition and weapons depots and dismantled 93 explosive devices during the operation.

It says 345 suspected militants and fleeing criminals have been arrested.

Since Egypt launched the wide-scale operation more than a month ago, 20 troops have been killed.

Egypt has been battling Islamic militants for years, but the insurgency gathered steam and grew deadlier after the 2013 ouster by the military, of Mohammed Morsi, an Islamist president whose one year in office proved divisive.

Hassan Nasrallah told his followers that Shiite Islamic law is more important than the Lebanese constitution and “it is mandatory to implement its orders.”

Nasrallah’s comments, allegedly made during a meeting with Iranian supporters living in Lebanon, were reported by the Iranian Farda News website. However, the website later retracted the statements and issued an apology to its readers. Hezbollah’s media office also issued a statement rejecting the Farda News article.

According to the original story, Nasrallah made a series of controversial remarks addressing the religious and political situations in Lebanon and Syria. While praising Lebanese President Michel Aoun, he complained that many Shiites in the country had “converted to Christianity or become Sunni Muslims.”

Nasrallah was quoted as saying that “the principles of Wilayat Al-Faqih,” in which religious scholars qualified in Shiite Islamic law make legislation and issue socially binding edicts, “are above the Lebanese constitution.”

Lebanon is one of the Middle East’s most diverse countries, with a population including Sunnis, Shiites, Alawites, Druze, Maronites and Copts. Under Lebanese law, the president must be a Maronite, the prime minister a Sunni and the speaker of Parliament a Shiite.

Tunisia has extended its state of emergency for another seven months, like reported by travelmole.com.

It was first declared in November 2015 following a suicide attack on a police bus, which was months after an attack on a beach in Sousse which killed 38 people, including 30 British holidaymakers.

The UK Foreign Office said although the Tunisian government has since improved protective security in major cities and tourist resorts, terrorists are still ‘very likely’ to try to carry out attacks in Tunisia.

It said there is also a heightened risk of terrorism against aviation.

“Security forces remain on a high state of alert in Tunis and other places,” it said.

“Additional security measures which restrict electronic devices on-board planes, have been in place on flights departing from Tunisia to the UK since March. You should co-operate fully with security officials.”

Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah and PA General Intelligence Services Chief Majid Faraj survived an assassination attempt on Tuesday after entering the Gaza Strip, official PA television reported.

“There is a big plot against us all,” said Hamdallah following the attack. “What happened today strengthens our determination to achieve reconciliation. I will return to the Gaza Strip.”

“Hamdallah and Faraj survived an assassination attempt,” Palestine TV posted on its Facebook page.

Hamdallah’s motorcade was targeted by an explosion, according to al-Jazeera. 

PA President Mahmoud Abbas’s office said, “Hamas bears full responsibility for the cowardly targeting of the prime minister’s motorcade in Gaza,” according to the official PA news site Wafa.

Hamdallah and Faraj came to Gaza to attend a ceremony to mark the opening of a new wastewater treatment plant in Beit Lahia in northern Gaza.

The United States has stepped up air strikes against ISIL in Libya in recent months, concerned that the terrorist organisation is regrouping there after punishing defeats in Syria and Iraq, like reported by thenational.ae.

From bases deep in the desert, ISIL continues to launch attacks, on Friday killing three members of the Libyan National Army at a checkpoint near the eastern town of Ajbabiya.

The threat from the insurgents has not gone unnoticed in Washington, where the head of the Pentagon’s Africa Command, revealed earlier this week that there have been eight strikes against ISIL targets in central Libya since September, the first during President Donald Trump’s administration.

“As terrorists flee from the Middle East because of our successful military efforts there, I’m concerned about other terrorist threats trying to establish operatives in Africa,” Marine General Thomas Waldhauser told the House Armed Services Committee in the US capital.

The number of air strikes in Libya is four more than had previously been acknowledged by the US, with the most recent reportedly taking place in January.

The Trump administration has a split policy on Libya, resisting political engagement even as it continues to battle ISIL. President Trump declared last April that the north African country is not a priority: “I do not see a role in Libya, I think the United States has, right now, enough roles, we’re in a role everywhere.”

But in the same speech he said ISIL was a separate matter.

“We are effectively ridding the world of ISIL,” he said. “I see that as a primary role, and that’s what we’re going to do whether it’s in Iraq or in Libya or anywhere else.”

In addition to the air strikes, primarily from armed drones based in Sicily, Waldhauser said the US has a small number of troops on the ground in Libya.

The battle against ISIL has been fought since 2016, during president Barack Obama’s administration, when the US launched more than 500 air strikes by drones and carrier aircraft in support of local forces who vanquished ISIL from its Libya headquarters in the coastal city of Sirte.

Since then, ISIL has regrouped, taking advantage of vast tracts of empty desert to set up camps.

Another US general this week branded ISIL in Libya as a “formidable regional terrorist threat”.

The group established a reputation for brutality with the execution of 21 Christians, 20 of them Egyptian, at Sirte in 2015.

The problem, according to the US military, is that air strikes are not a game changer, with generals conceding that only a political solution will end Libya’s chaos since the fall of longtime dictator Muammer Qaddafi.

The tumult of his overthrow in a 2011 revolution spilled into civil war in the summer of 2014. Political power is divided between the UN-backed Government of National Accord (GNA) in Tripoli and an eastern government in the city of Al Bayda. Between these two poles, dozens of factions fight for influence.

The Pentagon’s concern is that extremist groups based in Libya will infiltrate neighbouring countries. Units move to and from Niger, where four US servicemen were killed in a terrorist ambush in October. Five years ago this month 40 oil workers were killed by militants who attacked Algeria’s In Amenas gas plant from a base in Libya.

“We make tactical gains in Libya, and even in Somalia, but often times we see these hard-earned gains rolled back because we lack a larger strategy and diplomatic approach to realise those tactical gains,” said the Armed Services Committee member Elise Stefanik, a Republican congresswoman, during last week’s congressional hearings.

The United Nations has brokered peace talks since the civil war began, setting up the GNA in 2016, but the bloc has struggled to find support, and is rejected by the eastern government.

A parallel diplomatic initiative was launched last year by Egypt and the United Arab Emirates, which culminated in Paris discussions brokered by French President Emmanuel Macron between GNA prime minister Fayez Al Serraj and LNA commander Field Marshall Khalifa Haftar. Neither man signed a proposed agreement calling for a ceasefire, united government and disbandment of militias. While the LNA has established control across most of eastern Libya, the GNA has failed to rid Tripoli of its all-powerful militias who fight periodic battles with each other. Security is so bad in the Libyan capital that the UN and US operate embassies from neighbouring Tunisia for security reasons.

Egypt’s military said that 16 jihadists, an officer and a soldier were killed in the past four days during a major military operation against Islamic State (ISIS) group jihadists in Sinai, AFP reports.

Operation Sinai 2018 was launched on February 9 in the Sinai Peninsula, where Egypt has been fighting an ISIS insurgency for several years.

Most of the attacks in the Sinai Peninsula in recent years have been claimed by the Sinai Province, Egypt’s ISIS affiliate.

Egypt has been under a state of emergency since April last year, after two suicide bombings at churches claimed by ISIS killed at least 45 people in the cities of Tanta and Alexandria.

The sweeping campaign was launched after Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who is standing in elections for his second term this month, gave them a three-month deadline to crush ISIS in Sinai, according to AFP.

He issued his ultimatum in November after suspected ISIS gunmen massacred more than 300 worshippers in a Sinai mosque associated with Sufi Muslim mystics.

The military says it has evidence ISIS has sought to move members to Sinai following its defeats in Iraq and Syria.

The Tunisian authorities decided yesterday to extend the state of emergency for another seven months, starting 12 March, Anadolu Agency reported, quoting a statement by the Tunisian presidency office.

“Following consultations with Prime Minister Yusuf Al-Shahid and Parliament Speaker Mohamed Al-Nasser, President Beji Caid Essebsi has decided to extend the state of emergency for seven more months,” the statement read.

The state of emergency was first imposed in Tunisia following the 2011 uprising, which toppled the 25-year long regime of the former President, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.

Late November 2015, the country entered a second state of emergency following a terrorist attack which targeted a presidential security bus in central Tunis, leaving about 30 dead and wounded.

The state of emergency was renewed several times, most recently on 9 February.

Tunisian emergency law grants the interior minister with exceptional powers, including carrying out home arrests, banning official meetings, imposing curfews, monitoring media and press, prohibiting of assemblies and media censorship without judicial approval.

Recent developments have shown that an imminent battle might erupt at any time between the forces of the Libyan National Army (LNA), led by Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar, and forces loyal to the National Accord Government, headed by Fayez al-Sarraj, to control the south of the country, which has been witnessing security chaos since last week, like reported by aawsat.com.

A senior military official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Asharq Al-Awsat that the LNA would launch a major offensive in the coming hours to liberate the entire southern region from what he described as mercenaries and ISIS remnants, who tried to exploit the absence of a central government in the country.

In a brief statement, Haftar said without elaborating that he had ordered his forces to launch law enforcement operations in southern Libya. The LNA had reinforced its presence by air and land in the southern region by sending droves of troops from Benina airport, east of Benghazi, to the Barak beach base two days ago.

On the other hand, Sarraj announced the formation of a military force to secure and protect the southern region from all threats and to provide the needs of his government’s forces there.

Sarraj was speaking during a meeting on Sunday night with military and security leaders to discuss the current situation in the South.

The UN-backed prime minister stressed his keenness to establish security in the southern region and to prevent foreign interference. He also said he issued instructions to support the high-level delegation formed by his government and members of parliament and state councils to “engage in effective national reconciliation among the brothers of the homeland.”

Meanwhile, Brigadier General Ahmed al-Mesmari, LNA spokesman, ruled out a military confrontation between the army and forces loyal to the Sarraj government.

In remarks to Asharq Al-Awsat, he said: “I don’t think there could be a clash between the two sides, there aren’t really any militias loyal to Sarraj in the region.”

“It is in the absolute interest of the homeland to defeat the Chadian opposition and expel it from Libyan territory,” he added.