Armed attackers blew up a major oil pipeline in Libya, military and oil sources said, like reported by allafrica.com, and oil flows have been reduced by as much as 100,000 bpd.

The pipeline feeds into the central distribution station of Es Sider port on the Mediterranean Sea.

The state-run National Oil Corporation said in a statement that oil flow had been reduced by about 70,000-100,000 bpd.

It was unclear who carried out the attack.

“Islamic State” militants had been in the area before government forces defeated them in their Siirte stronghold last year.

Libya is rife with rival militias and armed groups, some in competition with the internationally backed government.

Oil was trading at more than $65 (€55) a barrel after the incident, close to its highest price since mid-2015. Voluntary OPEC-led supply cuts also impacted the price.

The pipeline is operated by Waha, a subsidiary of the National Oil Corporation (NOC) and a joint venture with Hess Corp, Marathon Oil Corp and ConocoPhillips.

Wada claims to pump 260,000 barrels a day from Libya’s southern desert.

Libya produces about 1 million barrels of per day, but production is often cut due to sabotage, politics and instability.

Online English-language news outlet The Libya Times shared unconfirmed images of the blast.

The Egyptian army announced that its troops have killed 12 terrorists in the terror-hit Sinai Peninsula in the past days, like reported by xinhuanet.com.

The Egyptian army launched several anti-terror operations in central and northern Sinai in cooperation with the Egyptian Air Force, the army’s spokesman said in a statement.

A terrorist was arrested during the operations in Sinai, where eight hideouts were discovered, the statement said.

A motorcycle, an explosive charge and weapons were seized by the army, it added.

The operations were conducted as part of the intensified efforts by the Egyptian armed forces to eradicate terrorism.

Egypt has been fighting against a wave of terrorism that has killed hundreds of policemen and soldiers since the military toppled former Islamist President Mohammed Morsi in 2013.

Terror attacks used to be centered in North Sinai before spreading nationwide and targeting the Coptic Christian minority as well. Most of the attacks were claimed by a Sinai-based terror group loyal to the regional militant group Islamic State (IS).

The Egyptian military and police have also killed hundreds of militants and arrested a similar number of suspects as part of the country’s anti-terror war.

The Islamic State (IS) is remobilizing in southern and central Libya, penetrating towns where lawlessness, tribal tensions and poverty are rife. No longer able to seize large swaths of land, the group is waging an insurgency to weaken the country’s competing authorities. The strategy is working, though experts and fighters from the western port city of Misrata, do not expect IS to reclaim the power it had in 2016, like reported by al-monitor.com.

The aspiring caliphate has a personal vendetta with Misrata after forces from the city — united under the banner of Al-Bunyan Al-Marsous (BAM) — defeated IS in the southern city of Sirte in December 2016. US airstrikes, which supported the forces, were vital to the mission.

BAM is nominally aligned with the internationally recognized Government of National Accord, and continues to cooperate with the United States to hunt down IS cells south of Sirte today. On Nov. 17 and 19, US drones ostensibly hit two IS outposts in the central town of al-Fuqaha, Libyan officials told reporters.

“The group isn’t going to reclaim the strength it once had,” Col. Ali Rafideh, a fighter in BAM, told Al-Monitor. “IS militants are hiding in the desert, but we are looking for them. We know that most Libyans do not accept this group in our country.”

IS still poses a major threat, even though it is on the run. On Oct. 4, the group hit a courthouse in Misrata, killing four people and wounding more than 40. Field Marshal Khalifa Hifter’s self-styled Libyan National Army (LNA) — the nemesis of militias in western Libya — is also struggling to keep the group at bay. In August, IS ostensibly attacked an LNA checkpoint in the southern town of Jufra, beheading nine fighters and two civilians.

“BAM and LNA are fighting Daesh [Arabic acronym for IS] on different fronts and under different leadership,” Rafideh said. “That’s the biggest issue Libya faces to fully defeat the group.”

Young Libyans at least are not as drawn to IS as they used to be. Lydia Sizer, a terrorist expert focusing on Libya and a guest contributor to the Middle East Institute, explained that the group’s senior leadership is mostly made up of Saudi nationals. Tunisians, Egyptian and Sudanese men comprise much of its lower ranks. Men from Senegal, Eritrea, Chad and Gambia are also reportedly fighting with IS in Libya.

“IS does not enjoy significant domestic support among the Libyan population,” Sizer told Al-Monitor. “IS [in Libya] also doesn’t have the attraction it once did for recruits; it no longer has significant territorial possessions, and it’s seen globally as being on the defensive.”

The group can still target civilian centers to damage the legitimacy of ruling powers. Tarek Megerisi, a Libya analyst and frequent contributor to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said that stopping them requires competing authorities to come together to address Libya’s security vacuum. IS particularly poses a major threat to civilians in Sirte and Misrata, and in areas surrounding the southern town of Ubari, which competing governments have neglected, enabling IS to bribe residents for shelter.

“Some semblance of economic and security control must be levied across Libya, so that communities aren’t desperate to tolerate the risk of an IS presence for money,” Megerisi told Al-Monitor. “[IS’] ability to move across the country would then be heavily compromised.”

Uniform governance is unlikely without a new political agreement that binds all of Libya’s major players. However, IS appears more willing to cooperate with rival jihadis and Islamist groups, hoping to subsume them if it regains enough power.

Hifter’s rhetoric is largely to blame. Since returning to Libya in 2014 — after spending more than two decades in exile in Virginia — the strongman has branded all his opponents as terrorists. His bravado is pushing several armed groups, which might have been willing to negotiate, into the hands of extremists. He also refuses to compromise, threatening to retake the capital Tripoli by force, though he does not have the manpower to do it.

In Megerisi’s view, IS will try to exploit the ongoing power struggle. The group could, for instance, recruit fighters that were uprooted by Hifter’s forces in the east. IS may also pay smugglers in the north to maneuver around the country, while embedding cells in the pro-Moammar Gadhafi town of Bani Walid, located in the east. Marginalized by the revolution, tribes in Bani Walid are staunch opponents of the current political order.

“The trajectory of the country is toward further conflict between large parties and an increasing fracturing of existing power groups and militias,” Megerisi said. “This will increase the intensity of local conflicts and provide more cover for IS to act as mercenaries.”

Civil society is also assuming a larger role to curtail extremism due to the absence of durable state institutions. Emad Badi, a youth activist from Tripoli, told Al-Monitor that it is particularly important to assuage tribal tensions in the south, where fighting over smuggling routes and oil fields is common.

“Community divisions have resulted in some tribes coordinating with IS [to settle scores with their rivals],” said Badi. “If civil society can improve social cohesion, then terrorist groups will have a harder time to exploit disadvantaged youth, or create further chaos.”

While that may be true, weak governance and the absence of a national army remain the biggest hindrances to eradicating IS. According to Rafideh, too many militias have political ambitions, while others prefer profiteering from the chaos than combating terrorism.

“The only way to defeat IS is to unify our country,” he said. “We need an army that unites fighters from across the country. Libya needs an army that is solely responsible for protecting the homeland and its people.”

Read more: http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2017/12/libya-islamic-state-attacks-rival-parties.html#ixzz51ynqDdNP

Though barely able to read, these tiny protesters robotically rattle off their enemies’ names and call for their deaths. Their mothers insist that early childhood is “the right age to learn” the ideology of hate, like reported by dw.com

Ali is six, and yet already he fiercely chants “Death to America” and “Death to Israel” at a rally alongside his family. It is a typical Beirut rally, organized by the Shia militia Hezbollah, to protest US President Donald Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

“At six, he is too old to not be here,” his mother Fatima said as she pushed the stroller carrying Ali’s baby brother, justifying her decision to bring her children to a political rally. She seemed unconcerned that his words were hate speech.

Fatima is a follower of Shia Islam and a Hezbollah supporter, like most of the thousands of people who had gathered in south Beirut’s Dahiya district, Hezbollah’s Shia-majority heartland.

The route of the march was a market street packed with men and women, all segregated on either side of the central reservation and walking to the soundtrack booming out from a television screen hanging from a flyover.

The screens subsequently relayed a speech from Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah. “After victory in Syria and Iraq, we will focus on Israel,” Nasrallah announced to a rapturous response.

Indoctrination begins early

There were as many if not more women and children as men at the rally. Women like Fatima brought their kids along not because of a lack of nannies or day care centers, but to purposely acquaint them with Hezbollah’s self-proclaimed cause — resistance to Israel.

“This is the right age to learn about how the Jews took our land,” Fatima said. She spoke heatedly about the events of 1948, when the state of Israel was formed on Palestinian land. “America helps Israel regularly and imposes war on us and now the Satan wants to give our mosque to the Jews,” Fatima said.

The Al Aqsa Mosque is the third most sacred site in Islam and is situated in East Jerusalem. In the Six-Day War in 1967, Israel seized and annexed the Old City, and Palestinians and the wider Arab world have been demanding its return ever since. President Trump’s widely criticized move, which the United Nations has sought to reverse, has mobilized Muslims across the Middle East and beyond, and though protests have been low-key, the issue has the potential of reinvigorating the famed but recently dormant “Arab street.” Lebanon is of special significance because it is Israel’s neighbor and staunchest enemy.

Children caught in a regional quest for power

Ensnared in this web of geopolitics are children like Ali. He may not know or understand any of this, having just begun school and barely able to read, let alone have a political understanding of a highly complicated region. But at a tender age he has been taught to unquestioningly identify his enemy and call for his death.

Ali and children like him repeat their parents’ slogans as they follow the voice emanating from the speakers installed on the rally’s route. All demand the death of Americans, Jews and Israelis who they have never spoken to or met.

Stopping for snacks and clicking selfies, the afternoon doubles as a picnic, a day out dedicated to normalizing hatred for “the other.” The impact on children is ignored, or is, in fact, the point. They are being initiated into the ways of Hezbollah, the Party of God, and for a six-year-old it is a ritual as much as anything else. “Jews and Americans are my enemy,” he said, when asked why he spoke as he did. He looked up at his mother for confirmation.

Hezbollah’s boy scouts

A short distance away, a group of boys were waving Hezbollah’s yellow flags and holding the pictures of fighters killed in the Syria and Iraq wars. They are wearing green uniforms with checkered scarves. “We are Hezbollah’s boy scouts,” said one, Abbas.

Oversized badges of the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Iran’s revolutionary leader, and pioneer of the Iranian philosophy of “Death to America” are pinned to their shirts. The boys call themselves the next generation of Hezbollah fighters. “We all want to fight for Hezbollah one day, Inshallah,” Abbas said.

Every summer, children spend weeks at Hezbollah’s camps learning basic fitness, some fighting techniques and Khomeini’s religious doctrine. Their goal is to make it to the ranks of fighters and protect the “family of Imam Hussain” — the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, whose followers broke away to form the Shia sect — anywhere in the world.

The training is also dedicated to making “better Muslims,” something they will prove in their fight against Israel. At least, that is Hezbollah’s message and that is what the boys believe. “I want to crush Israel under my feet,” Abbas said, stomping them to demonstrate.

He is 14, and was an infant when Israel and Lebanon last went to war in 2006. His anger towards Israel is borrowed, yet he is determined to become a Hezbollah fighter when he grows up so he can protect Lebanon from “Israeli aggression.”

Asked whether he would consider joining the Lebanese instead, he replied: “The Lebanese army is for Christians and Sunnis. Hezbollah is the real army of Lebanon and very strong.”

Hezbollah may be designated as a terrorist organization by the US, but in Lebanon it is a formidable force. For many Lebanese, especially the Shias, it is the Party of God which protects them not just from Israel, but from Sunni jihadi movements like the “Islamic State” and al-Qaida.

But Abbas has no idea that during the civil war in the 1980s, Shias in the south of Lebanon initially welcomed the Israelis to protect them from the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), which was Sunni and fighting the Shia. He is also unaware that the call “Death to America” was imported in Lebanon from Iran through Hezbollah and that even if the group is fighting “for Lebanon” it is ultimately furthering the Iranian cause.

Lessons from the past

Veterans of Lebanon’s 16-year civil war say that children like these are falling into a trap.

Ziad was 12 when he first picked up a gun in the 1970s. He calls it criminal to brainwash children and prepare them as cannon fodder for geopolitical wars. “Whether Hezbollah, Israelis or Americans, they are indoctrinating the children when young to turn them into killing machines,” he said.

As a former child soldier, Ziad says he feels the pain of the children being politicized in Dahiya, and compares them to the Hitler Youth of World War II. “If God gave me one wish, I would ask for my childhood, my teenage years back,” Ziad said. He now gives lectures about his experiences and sense of loss, in the hope that the next generation might learn something from them.

Judging by 21st century Dahiya, it is a forlorn hope. A new generation of Zaids, Alis and Abbases are being taught that childhood is a time to prepare for the next war.

An Egyptian military officer was killed and two others were wounded in a missile attack that was launched against a military airport in Sinai northern town of Al-Arish, the Egyptian army announced according to middleeastmonitor.com.

According to the army’s spokesperson, Col Tamer El-Rifai, the attack also caused partial damages to an armed forces helicopter.

The attack took place during a visit by the Egyptian ministers of interior and defence to Al-Arish.

“Military officers immediately dealt with the source of the smoke plume seen coming from the airport and taped off the surrounding area for further investigation,” El-Rifai added.

Egypt has been battling an entrenched Islamist insurgency for several years in North Sinai, with hundreds of security forces killed in the attacks.

The interior ministry announced today a high security alert level, allocating 230,000 security personnel to secure the country’s Christmas celebrations which start next week.

Egyptian security forces killed five militants and arrested 10 others in raids in the north of the country, the interior ministry said in a statement, like reported by reuters.com.

The suspects had planned attacks against public infrastructure and Christians and had links with militants in North Sinai, it said. The raids took place in Alexandria and Qalyubiya provinces.

Egypt has regularly carried out arrest raids and reported the killing of militant suspects in recent months as it fights a years-old Islamist insurgency in the remote North Sinai region.

President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi ordered the army and security forces to restore order in Sinai within three months after an attack on a mosque in November that was the deadliest in Egypt’s modern history. Islamic State is suspected to have conducted the attack in which more than 300 worshippers died.

Security forces have also faced attacks from other Islamists in the west of the country, near the border with Libya.

Italian sources reported that they have submitted a plan to be implemented within three years, in which the Libyan Coast Guard forces will be responsible to intercept illegal immigrants in about 10% of the Mediterranean Sea, like reported by arraedlg.com.

The plan, which was published by Reuters on Friday, shows the focus of Italy and the European Union in the rebuilding of the Libyan navy and coastguard’s capacity, by announcing the spending of 44 million euros in order to develop their capabilities by 2020.

The spokesman of the Libyan Coast Guard Ayoub Qasim told Reuters, ” there are no details about the plan, but Italy is keen to cooperate with Libya, because it is more effective to do so,” adding that the search and rescue area of ​​the Libyan Coast Guard patrols for about 145 Kilometers of the coast in some areas, and about 322 kilometers in other areas.

New satellite imagery from Terra Server — dated Sept. 24 and Nov. 10, 2017 — show accelerating construction on Al Khadim air base in eastern Libya, like reported by warisboring.com.

And that’s strong evidence that the United Arab Emirates is preparing to intervene even more in the grinding Libyan civil war. The imagery of Al Khadim, located in Al Marj province, depicts a new large parking area and aircraft shelters that could accommodate jet fighters.

Since June 2016, the Emirates have based AT-802 turboprop attack planes and Chinese-made Wing Loong drones at the base. The Emirati fleet has flown air strikes and reconnaissance missions in support of Libyan National Army troops fighting Islamist groups in Benghazi.

The new shelters are big enough to host fighter jets including F-16s, Mirage 2000s and even Rafales. Work on the shelters seems to have paused between February and September 2017, at a time when Egypt was ramping up its own support of the LNA, perhaps easing pressure on the UAE to work quickly. The Egyptian air force has deployed fighters, helicopters and Wing Loong drones to western Egypt to patrol the border and attack militants in Libya.

But Egypt has suffered setbacks. On Oct. 8, 2017, Egyptian colonel Abdullah El Refaey died in the crash of his F-16 near the Libyan border. Egyptian troops are also battling Islamist militants in the Sinai region. An ISIS attack on a Sufi mosque in Bir Al Abed in northern Sinai in November 2017 killed 305 people. In retaliation, Egyptian warplanes carried out air strikes on terrorist outposts and vehicles.

A sense of urgency returned to the Emirates base-building as Islamic State’s returned to Libya in the summer of 2017, especially in the oil region of southwestern Libya. In October ISIS staged a suicide attack on a court complex in Misrata that killed at least four people and wounded nearly 40. At the end of September 2017, U.S. drone strikes killed 17 ISIS militants southeast of Sirte. On Nov. 17 and 19, U.S. drones struck ISIS camps near Fuqaha in central Libya.

The speed with which the work is progressing at Al Khadim underscores how seriously the LNA and its foreign allies take the ISIS take threat in the region. With Egypt fighting on two fronts, the UAE is clearly planning on a much bigger deployment in Libya to support anti-Islamist forces.

A military helicopter’s pilot was killed in clashes that broke out in Tripoli’s Mitiga Airport between the Special Deterrent Force and a local brigade from Tajoura province in the capital’s suburbs, according to Al-Mutawaset newspaper and like reported by libyanexpress.com.

The Special Deterrent Force is the one controlling the Mitiga Airport, which is some kilometers away from Tajoura.

In a demonstration of its complete control over Lebanon, Hezbollah hosted members of an Iraqi Shiite militia along the border with Israel, like reported by thetower.org.

Qais al-Khazali, leader of the Iraqi militia Asaib Ahl al-Haq, as well as members of the militia appeared in a video that was released Saturday, with members of Hezbollah, Reuters reported. Al-Khazali said that he intended “to stand together with the Lebanese people and the Palestinian cause” against the “Israeli occupation.”

It isn’t clear when the video was recorded.

Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah, according to Reuters, said in June that any future wars waged by Hezbollah against Israel could include thousands of fighters from allied Shiite militias.

Hezbollah arranged a media tour of the border with Israel in April which showed that the Iran-backed terrorist group had “dropped all pretenses and laid bare the joke that is UNSCR 1701 and the ‘Lebanese government,” Tony Badran, a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, wrote at the time.

Brig. Gen. Mohammad Ali Falaki, who has commanded the Iranian-supported Afghan Fatemiyoun Division, said in August of last year that Iran was raising a Shiite army whose goal was “God willing, we will not have anything called Israel in 23 years.”

Israel’s total withdrawal from Lebanese territory in 2000 was recognized by the United Nations Security Council, which affirmed in June of that year that “Israel had withdrawn its forces from Lebanon in accordance with Security Council resolution 425.”

While Hezbollah claims that Shebaa Farms, which Israel captured from Syria in 1967, is Lebanese territory, the UN concluded that there is no basis for a Lebanese claim on the area. Experts have assessed that Hezbollah’s claims that Shebaa Farms is Lebanese territory serve as a pretext for keeping its weapons in violation of several UN Security Council resolutions.