U.S. conducts strikes against IS in Libya

The United States (U.S.) military has conducted air strikes against Islamic State targets in Libya, The Pentagon said yesterday.

The strikes were conducted in the Islamic State stronghold of Sirte at the request of the United Nations-backed Libyan Government of National Accord (GNA), according to U.S. and Libyan officials.

The Pentagon says the president authorised the strikes in support of GNA-affiliated forces. The attack was recommended by Secretary of Defense Ash Carter and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Joe Dunford.

U.S. strikes will continue to target Islamic State forces in Sirte in order to enable the GNA to “make a decisive, strategic advance” and to help deny IS a safe haven in Libya from which it could attack the U.S. and its allies, the Pentagon announced in a statement yesterday.

The militant group has been trying to expand in Sirte for more than a year. U.S. Africa Command’s Deputy for Military Operations, Vice Admiral Michael Franken, told VOA in an interview at Africom headquarters in Stuttgart last December that “if Raqqa (Syria) is the nucleus, the nearest thing to the divided nucleus is probably Sirte.“

Yesterday’s strikes mark the second American attack on IS in Libya this year.

In February, U.S. warplanes attacked an IS training camp in western Libya that was near the border with Tunisia, killing dozens of terrorist recruits. Defense officials in Washington said the airstrike most likely killed senior Islamic State figure Noureddine Chouchane.