U.S. planes bombed Islamic State targets in Libya on
Monday, responding to the U.N.-backed government’s request to help push the
militants from their former stronghold of Sirte in what U.S. officials
described as the start of a sustained campaign against the extremist group in
the city.
“The first air strikes were carried out at specific
locations in Sirte today causing severe losses to enemy ranks,” Prime Minster
Fayez Seraj said on state TV. Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook said the strikes
did not have “an end point at this particular moment in time”.
Forces allied with Seraj have been battling Islamic
State in Sirte – the home town of former dictator Muammar Gaddafi – since May.
The militants seized the Mediterranean coastal city
last year, making it their most important base outside Syria and Iraq. But they
are now besieged in a few square kilometres of the centre, where they hold
strategic sites, including the Ouagadougou conference hall, the central
hospital and the university.
Seraj said the Presidential Council of his
Government of National Accord, or GNA, had decided to “activate” its
participation in the international coalition against Islamic State and “request
the United States to carry out targeted air strikes on Daesh (Islamic State).” The air strikes on Monday – which were authorised by
U.S. President Barack Obama – hit an Islamic State tank and two vehicles that
posed a threat to forces aligned with Libya’s GNA, Cook said.
In the future, each individual strike will be
coordinated with the GNA and needs the approval of the commander of U.S. forces
in Africa, Cook added.
This was the third U.S. air strike against Islamic
State militants in Libya. But U.S. officials said this one marked the start of
a sustained air campaign rather than another isolated strike.
The last acknowledged U.S. air strikes in Libya were
on an Islamic State training camp in the western city of Sabratha in February.
Although it does not include the use of ground
troops beyond small special forces squads rotating in and out of Libya and
drones collecting intelligence, the air campaign opens a new front in the war
against IS and what American officials consider its most dangerous component
outside Syria and Iraq.
Obama authorized the strikes after a recommendation
by U.S. Secretary of Defense Ash Carter. Washington took part in air strikes in
2011 to enforce a no-fly zone in Libya which helped topple Gaddafi. The country
has struggled since then and Obama said in an interview with The Atlantic
magazine in April that the intervention “didn’t work”.
Why
is Libya so lawless? The Pentagon said Monday's strikes, authorized
by President Barack Obama, were in support of government forces currently
fighting IS militants.
"These actions
and those we have taken previously will help deny ISIL a safe haven in Libya
from which it could attack the United States and our allies," the Pentagon
statement continued, using another term for IS.
Pentagon spokesman
Peter Cook said the strikes hit "precision targets", including a
tank, in response to a request from the Libyan administration in the past few
days.
Keeping you updated up to
minute and you can always ask me question and drop your comment please
0 Comments