Algerian troops killed six armed militants on Monday west of Algiers, where security forces last week broke up a Daesh cell, the defence ministry said according to gulftoday.ae.

Five Kalashnikov rifles and ammunition were also recovered during Monday’s operation, which was still under way, near the town of Gouraya in Tipaza province, the ministry said in a statement.

It said that two militants had previously been killed in the operation, which started last week, raising the toll to eight. Local media and sources last week said security forces had dismantled a Daesh cell in Tipaza province. The cell was led by a former Al Qaeda commander convicted in France more than a decade ago for planning an attempted bombing in Strasbourg.

Violence has declined in Algeria since the 1990s war with militant fighters that killed 200,000 people. But Al Qaeda in the Maghreb and small bands of fighters allied to Daesh are still active in some remote areas.

The Internal Security Forces arrested members of a dangerous terror cell linked to the Islamic State group who were in motion mostly between the northern city of Tripoli and the region of Denniyeh north of Lebanon, the ISF said in a communique on Monday, according to naharnet.com.

“As a result of field follow-up and preventive security measures carried out by the Information Division of the Internal Security Forces, in a bid to monitor the activities of terrorist cells, especially those associated with the Islamic State terrorist organization, the said Division succeeded in identifying members of a seriously dangerous cell working in favor of the IS inside Lebanon,” the Directorate General of the Internal Security Forces – Public Relations Division said in the communique.

“The IS members were mostly in motion between the city of Tripoli and the area of Denniyeh in northern Lebanon,” it added.

A special force of the Division staged raids on July 24-25 which resulted in the arrest of the entire network, added the communique.

A number of weapons have been seized in the process.

The detainees have all been referred to the competent military court.

As the Islamic State terror network loses territory across Iraq and Syria, analysts and experts assert that the terrorist outfit is increasingly capitalizing on the chaos of Libya, positioning the country as its point of resurgence, like reported by foxnews.com.

The black-clad jihadist outfit is believed to be regrouping and recruiting in the rural regions south of the main east-to-west coastal highway and in the far-west town of Sabratha, which is poised just 60 miles from the Tunisian border, since being run out of its Libyan “caliphate” capital of Sirte late last year.

“The majority of their fighting force comes from Tunisia, so Sabratha is also a growing center,” prominent terrorism analyst Robert Young Pelton told Fox News. “ISIS in Libya can regenerate quickly.”

Col. Ahmed Almesmari, spokesperson for the self-styled Libyan National Army (LNA), told Fox News that ISIS first appeared in Libya at the end of 2013, even before its dominance in Iraq, borne out of “Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated militias” and Al Qaeda dissidents in Libya’s eastern port city of Derna near the Egyptian border.

But over time, ISIS has seemingly moved its operatives from the eastern Egyptian border and now appears to be clustering closer to the western Tunisian side. According to Almesmari, the terror faction has recently established camps around 25 miles east of the town of Bani Waleed, as well as south of Sirte.

Mohamed Ghasri, spokesperson and senior commander of the Mistrata-based al-Bunyam al-Marsous militia, which waged bloody battles with ISIS fighters in Sirte, stated last week that they too have observed movements by the group south of Sirte, where they are “trying to regroup and break through our forces’ lines in the south.”

Joseph Fallon, Islamic Extremism expert and U.K. Defense Forum research associate, concurred that “ISIS has retreated south of Sirte to regroup” and that its global threat cannot be underestimated.

“Here, it can jeopardize western interests through guerrilla warfare sabotaging Libya’s oil facilities and ports and through calculated use of terror to unleash a mass migration of people to destabilize neighboring countries and Europe,” he said.

A prominent portion of Libya’s oil fields and reserves are located south of Sirte, along with major refineries. The country is home to Africa’s largest reserves, and its optimum quality of light crude is highly sought. Despite its ongoing political crisis, production in Libya last week climbed to around 885,000 barrels per day – triple its production this time a year ago – making the region ever more important to the global oil equation, and ISIS’s presence there ever more troubling.

The terrorist army has, in Iraq and Syria, used oil fields as a means to fund its barbaric reign.

While more fighters are now expected to flow into Libya as the pressure on Iraq and Syria mounts, exactly how big the ISIS ranks in Libya are at present, remains largely contested.

In March, Marine Corps. Gen. Thomas Waldhauser, head of the U.S military’s Africa Command, told Pentagon reporters that their fighter numbers had fallen below 200 from an estimated five to six thousand a year earlier. But a spokesperson for Africa Command told Fox News this week that their strength has been assessed to be around 500.

In sharp contrast, LNA’s Almesmari said ISIS numbers are far larger – around “five to seven thousand people of different nationalities.”

The terrorist group, Pelton indicated, is well positioned to survive territorial losses such as Mosul, Raqqa and Sirte as its savvy propaganda promotion ensures ongoing recruitment.

“ISIS is a transnational franchise that comes with funding, trainers and PR packages,” Pelton noted. “They seek out groups who will re-brand themselves and project the image of an international organization by standardizing logos, messaging and even design criteria for tweets and videos.”

Since the death of its longtime leader Muammar Qaddafi – who was killed in 2011 following then-U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the Obama administration’s alleged maneuvers to back rebels in the quest for regime change – Libya as a country remains in a protracted state of conflict and a breeding ground for violent militias to emerge. It’s flushed with radical militias, weapons, human traffickers and two main – although there are many – competing factions.

There is the U.S. and U.N.-supported Government of National Accord (GNA) led by Prime Minister Fayez Serraj in Tripoli, at odds with the LNA which is helmed by the Egypt-endorsed, Benghazi-based Gen. Khalifa Haftar. One U.S official affiliated with the GNA, who requested anonymity, told Fox News that the “political and security vacuum” that existed in the country post 2011 “allowed ISIS to take root.”

“ISIS still poses a threat not just to Libya,” the U.S official added, “but to its neighbors, Europe and the United States.”

A large pro-Libyan National Army (LNA) force from surrounding districts is reported to have chased an Islamist militia out of Sabratha, like reported by libyaherald.com.

The sequence of events is unclear but they seem to have been triggered by the pro-Hafter demonstration in the town, which was described by Sabratha Municipality as “despicable”.

Some 500 LNA-linked forces from the Watiya airbase and nearby towns, possibly including Al-Jmail, Rigdaleen and even Zintan, clashed with the Al-Amu militia led by Ahmed Dabbashi, a member of a prominent local family with a record of Islamist support. No casualty figures have emerged but the engagement ended with the Al-Amu militiamen pulling out of the town.

They are reported to be 20 kilometres away, just west of the Mellitah Ol and Gas complex. Other local pro-Islamist militias are also understood to have quit the town and are said to be near Sorman and Zawia.

It seems unlikely the LNA-linked force has occupied Sabratha, though a post with a photograph of a vehicle sporting a decal reading “Special Task Forces” suggested this possibility.  The Islamist militias that have withdrawn are nearly all locals, even though they are unpopular in the town.

Events took place as the town’s mayor, Hassen Dhawadi, who clearly signed off on the “despicable” description of Friday’s pro-Hafter demonstrators, pulled off the political success of creating the Association of Libyan Municipalities at a two-day meeting in the town.

Lebanon’s army shelled the positions of the jihadist Islamic State group entrenched on the heights of Ras Baalbek’s outskirts, the National News Agency reported Friday.

The army reinforced measure on Wednesday sending elite units into the Bekaa region for a possible operation against the IS in the outskirts of the border towns of al-Qaa and Ras Baalbek.

The army’s Airborne Regiment reinforced its posts “in anticipation of any infiltration or escape attempts by the militants into the two towns,” the National News Agency had said.

The army’s shelling comes one day after a ceasefire agreement between Hizbullah and al-Nusra Front militant group in the outskirts of Arsal.

Hizbullah began the assault on fighters from al-Qaida’s former Syrian affiliate, previously known as al-Nusra Front, in the border region of Arsal’s outskirts last week.

The ceasefire deal will see jihadist fighters withdraw from the Syria-Lebanon border, to the Syrian province of Idlib.

On Thursday afternoon, the head of Lebanon’s General Security agency Major General Ibrahim Abbas confirmed the deal.

In his speech on Wednesday, Hizbullah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said his fighters were willing to hand the territory they have secured to Lebanese troops.

But the group’s fighters told journalists in Arsal’s outskirts that another phase of the battle to secure the region was still ahead.

They said Islamic State group fighters still hold parts of Arsal’s outskirts and the area around two border towns, but anticipated an easy victory.

Hezbollah’s effective control over Lebanon will undermine President Donald Trump’s efforts to counter all terror threats in the Middle East, an expert on Lebanon argued in an analysis published Wednesday in Tablet Magazine and like reported by thetower.org.

Tony Badran, a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, wrote that Trump’s praise for and encouragement of the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) as a counter-force to Hezbollah is misplaced because Hezbollah controls Lebanon.

During his joint press conference with Lebanon’s Prime Minister Saad Hariri on Tuesday, Trump praised Lebanon for its resilience “on the front lines in the fight against ISIS, Al Qaeda, and Hizballah.” The president also added that “Hizballah is a menace to the Lebanese state.”

Badran explained that the president’s statement was actually self-contradictory. Hezbollah is not a menace to the Lebanese state; Hezbollah is the Lebanese state, a force in control of central state organs.

Trying to combine an anti-Hezbollah and anti-Iran policy with a strategy that defines cooperation with the Lebanese state and the LAF as a desirable outcome, therefore, can only end in failure.

“It doesn’t work, and it only reinforces a pro-Iranian configuration, partly because the previous administration reconfigured its Lebanon policy to be part of its broader regional policy of realignment with Iran,” Badran explained, adding “and partly because Hezbollah controls Lebanon, its strategic orientation, and its security policy and apparatuses. In fact, Hezbollah controls the government of which Hariri is prime minister.”

Under President Barack Obama, the U.S. government promoted a strategic realignment with Iran, fueled by the nuclear agreement signed between the P5+1 nations (United States, Russia, China, United Kingdom, France and Germany) and the Islamic Republic two years ago, and promoted the LAF as a legitimate partner in the fight against ISIS. Since the LAF, however, operates based on the interests of Hezbollah, the organization is itself on the “extreme margin of that fight,” Badran argued.

The LAF’s complicity in Hezbollah’s criminal activity is most evident in Syria, where Hezbollah recently claimed several victories against Sunni jihadists in the Lebanon-Syria border region, with the help the Lebanese army.

Badran also warned against future implications of that policy, should a conflict erupt between Israel and Hezbollah, as some experts have predicted. “For what role will the LAF play if not that of a human shield for Hezbollah when the next conflict with Israel erupts?” he asked.

“What will the Lebanese government do but rush to the U.S. urging it to preserve its investment in that extraordinary partner in the war against terrorism, and to intervene to stop Israel from destroying the Lebanese state. After all, who but Hezbollah would benefit from that?” Badran concluded.

Libyan forces allied to the UN-backed government in Tripoli have warned that ISIS fighters are regrouping and could launch attacks on the port city of Misrata.

The armed group is said to be operating in the countryside after being forced out of the coastal city of Sirte last year.

Six years on from the ousting of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, much of the country remains lawless and in financial ruin.

Al-Mustaqbal parliamentary bloc warned that Hizbullah’s eastern border operation reflects an “Iranian decision” to “seize control of Lebanon.”

“The bloc discussed the developments of the ongoing battles in Arsal’s outskirts in the face of terrorist groups, expressing dismay over Hizbullah’s unilateral decision to launch the battle while bypassing the Lebanese state and its legitimate political, military and security institutions,” said Mustaqbal in a statement issued after its weekly meeting.

It added: “Hizbullah’s unilateral decision to wage this battle reflects the Iranian leadership’s decision and its plots to seize full control of Lebanon’s eastern border region, in coordination with the Syrian regime, to pave the way for seizing full control of Lebanon, subjugating its political system and turning it into one similar to the Iranian and Syrian regimes.”

Accordingly, the bloc emphasized that “there is no political or national legitimacy under any excuse for Hizbullah’s fighting in the eastern border region.”

Mustaqbal also called on the government to seek the deployment of the Lebanese army in areas from which jihadist militants are being ousted to “enable Arsal’s residents to return to their farms and run their businesses.”

It also called for utilizing U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701 in terms of “asking the Security Council to approve expanding the jurisdiction of UNIFIL forces to assist the Lebanese army in protecting Lebanon’s eastern and northern borders, in the vein of the successful experience in the South.”

Hizbullah’s major offensive against al-Nusra Front has entered its fifth day and most of the Arsal outskirts region has been captured from the hands of the jihadist group.

Hizbullah is expected to launch a similar operation against the jihadist Islamic State group in the border region in the near future.

Nusra and IS militants had overrun Arsal in 2014 before being ousted by the army after days of deadly battles.

The two groups were also responsible for sending several bomb-laden cars and suicide bombers into Lebanon under the excuse of responding to Hizbullah’s military intervention in neighboring Syria.