Tag Archives: Islamic State

Signs grow of new Western urgency to stop Islamic State in Libya

WADI BEY, Libya (Reuters) – An hour’s drive from the Libyan city of Sirte, a few dozen troops man outposts along a desert road. They are hoping the West will soon be giving them more help to fight a common enemy: Islamic State.

Armed with little more than gun-mounted pick-up trucks, they are a last line of defense against the Sunni Islamist group which controls swathes of Syria and Iraq and which has now taken advantage of chaos in the north African state to seize territory there. Sirte is its stronghold.

“They’re getting stronger because no one is fighting them,” said Misrata forces commander Mahmoud Gazwan at the Wadi Bey checkpoint, a dusty outpost serving as a mobile base for his brigade of fighters.

There are signs of a growing Western urgency to stop Islamic State (ISIS), and Libyan commanders say Western weapons and air strikes will make a vital difference in the coming battle against their better-armed enemy.

But Western officials say just as important is the need for a united Libya government to request more aid and for the Libyan forces ranged against IS to bridge their own deep divisions.

Five years after Muammar Gaddafi’s overthrow and death, Libya is caught in a slow-burn civil war between two rival governments, one in Tripoli and one in the east. Each is backed by competing alliances of former rebel brigades whose loyalties are often more to tribe, region or local commander.

Forces from the port city of Misrata – one of the most powerful military factions – have been on the front line of the battle against Islamic State since it took over Sirte a year ago and drew more foreign fighters to its ranks there.

Islamic State militants are also fighting in Benghazi to the east, shelling the oil ports of Ras Lanuf and Es Sider. On Tuesday they attacked further west in Sabratha city.

U.S. special forces have been holding meetings with potential Libyan allies. U.S. and French drones and British RAF jets are flying reconnaissance missions in preparation for action to help the local forces fighting Islamic State.

An air raid by U.S. special forces on Sabratha killed more than 40 Islamic State fighters last week, but there are no international plans to send combat ground troops into Libya.

Western governments are wary of large-scale military intervention but fear inaction may allow Islamic State to take deeper root.

A U.S. government source said the Obama Administration was pursuing a two-track policy. One is to try to knit competing factions into an effective government. The other track involves air strikes.

“When you see an ISIL training camp and we see them doing push-ups and calisthenics every day, they’re not there to lose weight,” Brett McGurk, the U.S. envoy to the international coalition fighting Islamic State, also known as ISIL or Daesh, told White House reporters.

“They’re there to train for something, and we’re not going to let them do that.”

CONVERGENCE OF FORCES?

U.S. and European officials say infighting between the rival administrations is blocking U.N. efforts to cajole them into a national government capable of rebuilding Libya’s army.

Tripoli is held by a faction of Islamist-leaning brigades and Misrata fighters who took over the city in 2014 and drove out rivals. Misrata now backs the U.N. deal while some of the Tripoli political leadership is against it.

Libya’s eastern government is backed by an alliance including the Libyan National Army led by former Gaddafi ally-turned rebel Gen. Khalifa Haftar, and a brigade controlling oil ports. Its ranks are split, including federalists looking for more autonomy for their eastern region.

The United Nations-backed presidential council is waiting for approval of its new government from the elected House of Representatives in the east.

Frustration is growing in Western capitals after repeated failures of the House to vote or reach a quorum to hold a ballot on the new government.

“We have always made clear the intention of providing assistance in fighting Daesh. We need to take action where we can, that requires forces on the ground that we can help and train,” said one Western diplomat.

“Patience is very short with the House of Representatives.”

Italy said on Monday it would let U.S. armed drones take off from its soil to defend U.S.-led forces against Islamic State.

French special forces and intelligence commandos are engaged in covert operations against IS in Libya in conjunction with the United States and Britain, the French newspaper Le Monde reported on Wednesday. The French defense ministry declined to comment.

During the recent fighting in Sabratha, there were signs of cooperation among forces from Zintan and Sabratha brigades who back opposing sides in the wider national conflict.

Mattia Toaldo, a Libya expert with the European Council on Foreign Relations, sees a convergence of forces who may agree on little but can work together against IS.

Misratan forces backed the new U.N.-supported government and could potentially work with rivals from Haftar’s Libyan National Army and the oil guards, who are both aligned with the eastern government, Toaldo said.

“We are confident here we can win,” says Mohamed al-Oreifi, one of the outpost commanders near the Sirte front line. “But we need support and new weapons.”

(Additional reporting by Steve Scherer in Rome and Mark Hosenball and Roberta Rampton in Washington; writing by Patrick Markey; editing by Andrew Roche)

U.S. training African police to counter new jihadist threats

THIES, Senegal (Reuters) – Ahead of a drill to teach West African police about forensics by blowing up a car filled with crash test dummies posing as suicide bombers, FBI agents met an unexpected question: why bother to investigate if the militants are already dead?

The query from a Senegalese officer demonstrates the steep learning curve for the region’s security forces if they are to keep pace with increasingly brazen and sophisticated jihadists moving in from the north-central Sahara and possibly Libya.

Since Islamic State’s entry into Libya last year, al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) has responded with a series of attacks to bolster its claim of primacy in the western Sahara.

Western governments worry the Islamic State presence in Africa may lead to ties with West Africa’s Boko Haram, which pledged allegiance to the group last year, and could herald a drive south. Some al Qaeda-linked brigades also appear to be merging.

Reflecting the changing threat and after major attacks in the last four months in Mali and Burkina Faso in which at least 50 people, including many Westerners, were killed, this year’s annual “Flintlock” counter-terrorism exercises have included police training for the first time.

Recent West African efforts have revealed blunders, security sources say.

So many people touched an assault rifle used by militants in the Bamako attack, for example, that it was impossible to take fingerprints.

In January, an AQIM death row fugitive who fled Mauritania via Senegal was able to travel 300 miles before being stopped in Guinea, acquiring arms and accomplices on the way, thanks in part to bungled communication between Senegalese and Mauritanian officials, a Senegalese security source said.

U.S. experts say three main shortfalls need to be addressed: intelligence, cross-border cooperation and reaction times.

“In most African countries the capacity to respond to these sorts of incidents is middle-of-the-road at best,” said a senior U.S. military officer, who asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of his remarks.

“But they are very eager to learn.”

NEW TECHNIQUES

Security experts report a growing sophistication since last year in the tactics and weaponry used by AQIM and associated groups, which they say may be born of competition with Islamic State.

An armored suicide truck, albeit a makeshift one, was used in an attack on a U.N. base in Kidal in northern Mali that killed seven peacekeepers this month.

Boko Haram suicide vests now often include hidden cell phones so they can be remotely detonated and increasingly resemble those used in the Middle East, weapons experts say.

Until last year, desert militants, aiming by moonlight, had fired rockets from far away and mostly missed their targets.

As the threat grows, there are signs the U.S. is increasing its commitments.

Already, there are up to 1,200 special operations forces on the continent, providing training, operating drones and, very rarely, intervening directly such as in the Ouagadougou siege.

Last week, the U.S. launched its second set of air strikes in Libya in three months in what risk management consultancy Signal Risk’s director Ryan Cummings called a “point of departure” from a strategy previously characterized by a limited appetite for offensive roles in Africa.

Washington is proposing $200 million in new military spending for North and West Africa. Both the United States and France, which has 3,500 troops in the region, intend to boost support to regional security body Group of Five Sahel, diplomats and officials say.

Three sources familiar with the agreement told Reuters that the United States and Senegal had agreed a new accord granting rights to establish a base here in case of an emergency.

Intelligence sharing among the different countries of West Africa will be key, security officials said.

The United States plans to set up the first of many “intelligence fusion” centers at the headquarters for a regional anti-Boko Haram task force in Chad to allow countries to share sensitive information in a secure environment.

“If we continue to invest in the development of regional platforms, it will pay huge dividends over the next year, but it cannot be done without a comprehensive approach,” said Commander for Special Operations Command Africa Brigadier General Donald Bolduc.

Overcoming suspicions between neighbors and historic rivals will be a challenge, however.

“The sharing of intelligence between neighbors is not where it should be and this is critically important,” said a Western intelligence source at Flintlock.

(Writing by Emma Farge; Editing by Sonya Hepinstall)

Islamic State tightens grip on Syrian government road to Aleppo

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Islamic State fighters were reported to have tightened their grip on a Syrian government supply route to Aleppo on Tuesday as the army battled to retake the road, which is important to its campaign to retake the city.

As Damascus accepted a U.S.-Russian plan for a “cessation of hostilities” between the government and rebels due to take effect on Saturday, heavy Russian air strikes were also said to be targeting one of the last roads into opposition-held parts of Aleppo.

The plan announced by the United States and Russia on Monday is the result of intensive diplomacy to end the five-year-long war. But rebels say the exclusion of Islamic State and the al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front will give the government a pretext to keep attacking them because its fighters are widely spread in opposition-held areas.

The Syrian government, backed by Russian air strikes since September, said it would coordinate with Russia to define which groups and areas would be included in what it called a “halt to combat operations”. Damascus also warned that continued foreign support for the rebels could wreck the agreement.

The Russian intervention has turned the momentum President Bashar al-Assad’s way in a conflict that has splintered Syria and mostly reduced his control to the big cities of the west and the coast.

Damascus, backed by ground forces including Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Iranian Revolutionary Guards, is making significant advances, including near the city of Aleppo which is split between rebel- and government-control.

The Islamic State assault has targeted a desert road which the government has been forced to use to reach Aleppo because insurgents still control the main highway further west.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which reports the war using a network of sources on the ground, said the road remained cut for a second day. A Syrian military source told Reuters army operations were continuing to repel the attack.

Observatory Director Rami Abdulrahman told Reuters: “The clashes are ongoing, the regime recovered four of seven (lost positions). It is still cut.” It later reported IS had seized control of the village of Khanaser on the road.

Islamic State, which controls swathes of eastern and central Syria, differs from rebels fighting Assad in western Syria because its priority is expanding its own “caliphate” rather than reforming Syria through Assad’s removal from power.

The group has escalated attacks on government targets in recent days. On Sunday, it staged some of the deadliest suicide bomb attacks of the war, killing around 150 people in government-controlled Damascus and Homs.

A U.S.-Russian statement said the two countries and others would work together to delineate the territory held by IS, Nusra Front, and other militant groups excluded from the truce.

In Geneva, U.N. spokesman Ahmad Fawzi said: “This is a cessation of hostilities that we hope will take force very quickly and hope provide breathing space for intra-Syrian talks to resume.”

RIGHT TO RESPOND

Damascus stressed the importance of sealing the borders and halting foreign support for armed groups and “preventing these organizations from strengthening their capabilities or changing their positions, in order to avoid what may lead to wrecking this agreement”.

The Syrian military reserved the right to “respond to any breach by these groups against Syrian citizens or against its armed forces”, a government statement added.

The main, Saudi-backed Syrian opposition body said late on Monday it “consented to” the international efforts, but said acceptance of a truce was conditional on an end to blockades of rebel-held areas, free access for humanitarian aid, a release of detainees, and a halt to air strikes against civilians.

The opposition High Negotiations Committee also said it did not expect Assad, Russia, or Iran to cease hostilities.

The powerful Kurdish YPG militia, which is currently fighting both Islamic State and rebels near Aleppo, is “seriously examining” the U.S.-Russian plan to decide whether to take part, a YPG official told Reuters. “There is so far no decision,” said the official, declining to be identified because he is not an official YPG spokesman.

The YPG, an ally of the United States in the fight against Islamic State in Syria, has recently received Russian air support during an offensive against rebels near Aleppo.

Britain said on Tuesday it had seen disturbing evidence that Syrian Kurdish forces were coordinating with the Syrian government and the Russian air force.

Turkey, a major sponsor of the insurgency against Assad, said it welcomed plans for the halt to fighting but was not optimistic about a positive outcome to talks on a political transition.

Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus said Ankara had reservations about actions that Russian forces could take against Syria’s moderate opposition and civilians. Turkey is worried about the expansion of YPG influence in Syria, fearing it could fuel separatism among its own Kurdish population.

A rebel fighter in the Aleppo area said he did not expect the ceasefire plan to work.

“The Russian jets will not stop bombing on the pretext of Nusra and the Islamic State organization, and will keep bombing civilians and the rest of the factions with this pretext,” said Abu al-Baraa al-Hamawi, a fighter with the Ajnad al-Sham group.

“Everything that is happening is pressure to extend the life of the regime,” he told Reuters from the Aleppo area.

(Additional reporting by Kinda Makieh in Damascus, Orhan Coskun in Ankara, Guy Faulconbridge in London and Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva; Writing by Tom Perry; Editing by Giles Elgood)

Libya official warns of more Islamic State attacks on oil facilities

TRIPOLI (Reuters) – Libya’s oil facilities are likely to suffer further attacks unless a United Nations-backed unity government is approved, the head of the National Oil Corporation (NOC) told Reuters in an interview on Monday.

Mustafa Sanalla also said suspected Islamic State militants had staged their latest attack against Libya’s oil infrastructure last Thursday or Friday, setting fire to one production tank and damaging another at the Fida oil field.

Fida lies south-west of the oil terminals of Es Sider and Ras Lanuf, where militants launched repeated assaults and inflicted major damage last month.

“If there is no new government I think the situation will get worse. I believe there will be more attacks on the oil facilities,” Sanalla said.

Libya has been mired in conflict following an uprising that toppled veteran leader Muammar Gaddafi five years ago. Two rival governments, backed by loose alliances of armed groups, are now vying for power and a share of the OPEC member’s oil wealth.

Islamic State militants have taken advantage of the security vacuum to establish a foothold in Libya, seizing Gaddafi’s hometown of Sirte and launching attacks in several other cities.

A unity government is trying to win approval from Libya’s internationally recognized parliament in eastern Libya, known as the House of Representatives (HOR). But the government remains plagued by divisions and has faced opposition from hardliners on both sides of Libya’s political divide.

“We are urging the HOR to approve this government to put an end to these troubles we have regarding security in the oil industry,” Sanalla said.

UNIFIED SECURITY FORCE

Total current production generally stands at 360,000-370,000 barrels per day, Sanalla said, though sometimes production drops to around 300,000 bpd because of technical problems.

That is less than a quarter of the 1.6 million bpd that Libya was producing before the 2011 uprising. About 100,000 barrels per day are refined locally for domestic consumption, with the rest exported.

Sanalla said the NOC in Tripoli faced a “daily battle” to prevent authorities in eastern Libya from selling oil through parallel structures.

But Sanalla said he was “optimistic” that Libya’s total production could recover quickly under a unity government, with an additional 400,000 bpd or more coming on stream from fields at El Sharara and El Feel in south-western Libya.

Sanalla said a unity government should set up a unified security force to protect facilities. This could incorporate the Petroleum Facilities Guard (PFG), a largely independent brigade that controls the area around Ras Lanuf and Es Sider, he added.

The PFG fought militants at Es Sider and Ras Lanuf last month, but Sanalla said their defenses were weak and that 20 of the 32 oil storage tanks at the terminals had been destroyed or badly damaged. Repairing those installations will cost hundreds of millions of dollars, he said.

(Writing by Aidan Lewis, editing by Gareth Jones)

Study finds Islamic State using more child soldiers, 89 die in 13 months

At least 89 children have died in the past 13 months while acting on behalf of the Islamic State, according to a new study suggesting the group has more child soldiers than previously thought.

The study, published Thursday by the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, says that the Islamic State “is mobilizing children and youth at an increasing and unprecedented rate.”

It focuses on the 89 children and teenagers who the Islamic State has publicly eulogized as martyrs since January 1, 2015, shining a light on how the group uses children in its operations.

The study found children are largely being given the same roles as their adult counterparts and “are fighting alongside, rather than in lieu of” men. The findings suggest the Islamic State’s “systematic use of children is more widespread than previously imagined,” the report states.

The Islamic State does not publicize the ages of the deceased children, so the researchers had to rely on photographs to determine their approximate ages. They found 60 percent of the child soldiers were believed to be adolescents (ages 12 to 16), 6 percent appeared to be pre-adolescent (ages 8 to 12) and the remaining 34 percent seemed to be older adolescents (ages 16 to 21).

Many of the children died setting off vehicle bombs (39 percent) or as soldiers on the battlefield (33 percent). Another 18 percent died in “inghimasi” attacks, where a mix of adult and child soldiers shoot their way into enemy territory before blowing themselves up. The others were killed while working as propagandists among Islamic State units or in attacks against civilians.

The study found that 87 percent of the children were purportedly killed in Iraq or Syria, where the group controls large portions of land, while the others died in Libya, Nigeria and Yemen.

Researchers acknowledge the data isn’t all-encompassing — they noted the Islamic State did not publicly release photographic propaganda about every one of its suicide attacks last month, for example — but they maintain the report is the most comprehensive analysis of its kind to date.

They also warned that the Islamic State utilization of child soldiers appears to be on the rise, saying 11 were killed in suicide missions last month compared to just six during January 2015.

A spokesman for the United States-led coalition against the Islamic State has said Iraqi forces have regained significant amounts of territory the insurgency once held in Iraq and Syria, and airstrikes recently destroyed “significant amounts” of cash the group used to fund its operations.

The report suggests a potential link between recent military pressure and the uptick in deaths.

“It seems plausible that, as military pressure against the Islamic State has increased in recent months, such operations — especially those of the inghimasi variety — are becoming more tactically attractive,” it states. “They represent an effective form of psychological warfare. … We can expect that as their implementation increases, so too will the reported rate of child and youth deaths.”

Missing radioactive material found dumped in south Iraq

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Radioactive material that went missing in Iraq has been found dumped near a petrol station in the southern town of Zubair, officials said on Sunday, ending speculation it could be acquired by Islamic State and used as a weapon.

The officials told Reuters the material, stored in a protective case the size of a laptop computer, was undamaged and there were no concerns about radiation.

Reuters reported last week that Iraq had been searching for the material since it was stolen in November from a storage facility belonging to U.S. oilfield services company Weatherford near the southern city of Basra.

It was not immediately clear how the device, owned by Swiss inspections group SGS, ended up in Zubair, around 9 miles southwest of Basra.

“A passer-by found the radioactive device dumped in Zubair and immediately informed security forces which went with a special radiation prevention team and retrieved the device,” the chief of the security panel within Basra provincial council, Jabbar al-Saidi, told Reuters.

“After initial checking I can confirm the device is intact 100 percent and there is absolutely no concern of radiation.”

A security official close to the investigation said it had been established soon after the material was stolen that it was being kept in Zubair and controls had been tightened to prevent it being taken out of the town.

“After failing to take it out of the town, the perpetrators decided to dump it,” the security official said. “I assure you it is only a matter of time before we arrest those who stole the radioactive device.”

The material, which uses gamma rays to test flaws in materials used for oil and gas pipelines in a process called industrial gamma radiography, is owned by Istanbul-based SGS Turkey, according to the document and officials.

The material is classed as a Category 2 radioactive source by the IAEA, meaning that if not managed properly it could cause permanent injury to a person in close proximity to it for minutes or hours, and could be fatal to someone exposed for a period of hours to days.

SGS and Weatherford have both denied responsibility for the disappearance of the material last year.

(Additional reporting by Aref Mohammed in Basra; Writing by Isabel Coles; editing by Susan Thomas and Digby Lidstone)

U.S. ramps up Apple fight with new filing in iPhone unlocking case

WASHINGTON/LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – The U.S. Department of Justice filed a motion seeking to compel Apple Inc to comply with a judge’s order for the company to unlock the encrypted iPhone belonging to one of the San Bernardino shooters, portraying the tech giant’s refusal as a “marketing strategy.”

The filing escalated a showdown between the Obama administration and Silicon Valley over security and privacy that ignited earlier this week.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation is seeking the tech giant’s help to access the shooter’s phone by disabling some of its passcode protections. The company so far has pushed back, and on Thursday won three extra days to respond to the order.

Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The motion to compel Apple to comply did not carry specific penalties for the company, and the Justice Department declined to comment on what recourse it was willing to seek. In the order, prosecutors acknowledged that the filing “is not legally necessary.”

But the Justice Department said the motion was in response to Apple CEO Tim Cook’s public statement Wednesday, which included a refusal to “hack our own users and undermine decades of security advancements that protect our customers.”

The clash between Apple and the Justice Department has driven straight to the heart of a long-running debate over how much law enforcement and intelligence officials should be able to monitor digital communications.

A federal court hearing in California has been scheduled for March 22 in the case, according to Thom Mrozek, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California.

“Rather than assist the effort to fully investigate a deadly terrorist attack … Apple has responded by publicly repudiating that order,” prosecutors wrote in the Friday order.

“Apple’s current refusal to comply with the court’s order, despite the technical feasibility of doing so, instead appears to be based on its concern for its business model and public brand marketing strategy,” prosecutors said.

The two sides have been on a collision course since Apple and Google began offering default end-to-end encryption on their devices in 2014, a move prompted in part by the surveillance revelations from former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden.

But the Justice Department struggled to find a compelling case where encryption proved to be an insurmountable hurdle for its investigators until the Dec. 2 shooting rampage by Rizwan Farook and his wife in San Bernardino, California, which killed 14. Authorities believe the couple was inspired by the Islamic State.

Some technology experts and privacy advocates backing Apple suggest Farook’s work phone likely contains little data of value. They have accused the Justice Department of choreographing the case to achieve a broader goal of gaining support for legislation or a legal precedent that would force companies to crack their encryption for investigators.

The case has quickly become a topic in the U.S. presidential race. Republican frontrunner Donald Trump on Friday called for a “boycott” against Apple until the company complied with the court order.

(Reporting by Julia Edwards, Dustin Volz and Lisa Richwine; Additional reporting by David Ingram; Editing by Andrew Hay and Bill Rigby)

U.S. strikes Islamic State in Libya, killing 40 people

TRIPOLI (Reuters) – U.S. warplanes carried out air strikes against Islamic State-linked militants in western Libya on Friday, killing as many as 40 people in an operation targeting a suspect linked to two deadly attacks last year in neighboring Tunisia.

It was the second U.S. air strike in three months against Islamic State in Libya, where the hardline Islamist militants have exploited years of chaos following Muammar Gaddafi’s 2011 overthrow to build up a presence on the southern shores of the Mediterranean Sea.

The Pentagon said it had targeted an Islamic State training camp and killed a Tunisian militant linked to major attacks on tourists in Tunisia.

Among those Washington said it targeted was Noureddine Chouchane, a Tunisian blamed by his native country for attacks last year on a Tunis museum and the Sousse beach resort, which killed dozens of tourists.

“Destruction of the camp and Chouchane’s removal will eliminate an experienced facilitator and is expected to have an immediate impact on ISIL’s ability to facilitate its activities in Libya, including recruiting new ISIL members, establishing bases in Libya, and potentially planning external attacks on U.S. interests in the region,” the Pentagon said, using an acronym for Islamic State, also known as ISIS or Daesh.

The mayor of the Libyan city of Sabratha, Hussein al-Thwadi, told Reuters the planes hit a building in the city’s Qasr Talil district, home to many foreigners.

He said 41 people had been killed and six wounded. The death toll could not immediately be confirmed with other officials.

The White House said it could not yet confirm the results of the air assault, but that it was committed to fighting Islamic State.

“It’s an indication that the president will not hesitate to take these kinds of forceful, decisive actions,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest said. Other U.S. officials said they believed it is highly likely Chouchane is dead.

In Libya, photos released by the municipal authorities showed a massive crater in gray earth. Several wounded men lay bandaged in hospital.

The strikes targeted a house in a residential district west of the center, the municipal authorities said in a statement.

The house had been rented to foreigners including Tunisians suspected of belonging to Islamic State, and medium-caliber weapons including machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades had been found in the rubble, the statement said.

Tunisian security sources have said they believe Tunisian Islamic State fighters have been trained in camps near Sabratha, which is close to the Tunisian border.

The air strikes came just days after a warning by President Barack Obama that Washington intended to “take actions where we’ve got a clear operation and a clear target in mind”.

“And we are working with our coalition partners to make sure that as we see opportunities to prevent ISIS from digging in, in Libya, we take them,” Obama said on Tuesday.

Britain said it had authorized the use of its airbases to launch the attack.

“I welcome this strike that has taken out a Daesh training camp being used to train terrorists to carry out attacks,” Defence Secretary Michael Fallon said in a statement.

Islamic State runs a self-styled caliphate across swathes of Iraq and Syria, where it has faced air strikes from a U.S.-led coalition since 2014.

Thwadi, the Sabratha mayor, said some Tunisians, a Jordanian and two women were among the dead, and several Tunisians who had recently arrived in Sabratha were among survivors. He gave no further details.

DEEPER INTO CHAOS

Since Gaddafi was overthrown five years ago by rebel forces backed by NATO air strikes, Libya has slipped deeper into chaos, with two rival governments each backed by competing factions of former rebel brigades.

A U.N.-backed government of national accord is trying to win support, but is still awaiting parliamentary approval. It is opposed by factional hardliners and has yet to establish itself in the capital Tripoli.

Islamic State has expanded, attacking oil ports and taking over Gaddafi’s home city of Sirte, now the militant group’s most important stronghold outside its main redoubts in Syria and Iraq.

Calls have increased for a swift Western response to stop the group establishing itself more permanently and using Libya as a base for attacks on neighbors Tunisia and Egypt.

The leading Democrat in the U.S. House of Representatives’ Intelligence Committee, Rep. Adam Schiff, urged a better U.S. plan for North Africa.

“Ultimately, we need a comprehensive North African strategy in which we, our allies and our regional partners conduct operations to deny ISIS a sanctuary where it can continue to organize and train, establish an alternate base to Syria and Iraq, and threaten the fragile democracy of Tunisia,” he said in a statement.

Western officials and diplomats have said air strikes and special forces operations are possible as well as an Italian-led “security stabilization” plan of training and advising.

U.S. and European officials have in the past insisted Libyans must first form a united government and ask for help, but they also say they may still carry out unilateral action if needed.

The United States estimates that the number of militants directly affiliated with Islamic State or sympathetic to it now operating in Libya is in the “low thousands,” or less than 5,000, a U.S. government source said.

Last November the United States carried out an air strike on the Libyan town of Derna, close to the Egyptian border, to kill Abu Nabil, an Iraqi commander in Islamic State.

Last June, a U.S. air strike targeted veteran Algerian militant Mokhtar Belmokhtar and other jihadists meeting in eastern Libya. His fate is unclear.

The United Nations warned on Friday that efforts to confront Islamic State must be done in accordance with international law.

“The fight against Daesh in Libya should be Libyan-led. It is therefore critical that the Libyans seize the opportunity to unite under a government of national accord,” U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric told reporters.

(Additional reporting by Warren Strobel and Mark Hosenball and Roberta Rampton in Washington and Michelle Nichols at the United Nations; Writing by Dominic Evans and Peter Graff; Editing by Patrick Markey, Alison Williams, Andrew Roche and Alistair Bell)

U.N. aims to air drop food to ISIS-besieged city in eastern Syria

GENEVA (Reuters) – The United Nations plans to make its first air drops of food aid in Syria, to Deir al-Zor, an eastern town of 200,000 besieged by Islamic State militants, the chair of a U.N. humanitarian task force said on Thursday.

U.N. aid agencies do not have direct access to areas held by Islamic State, including Deir al-Zor, where civilians face severe food shortages and sharply deteriorating conditions.

Jan Egeland, speaking to reporters in Geneva a day after U.N. aid convoys reached five areas, some besieged by government forces and others by rebels, said the U.N.’s World Food Programme (WFP) had a “concrete plan” for carrying out the Deir al-Zor operation in coming days.

He said the WFP hoped to make progress reaching “the poor people inside Deir al-Zor, which is besieged by Islamic State. That can only be done by air drops,” said Egeland.

“It’s a complicated operation and would be in many ways the first of its kind,” Egeland said, giving no details of the air operation, which is far more costly than land convoys.

Egeland, who is head of the Norwegian Refugee Council, later told Reuters in Oslo: “It is either airdrops or nothing. Airdrops are a desperate measure in desperate times.”

A WFP official was not available to comment on where cargo planes would depart from or what they would carry.

Deir al-Zor is the main town in a province of the same name. The province links Islamic State’s de facto capital in the Syrian city of Raqqa with territory controlled by the militant group in neighboring Iraq.

Egeland chaired a three-hour meeting of the humanitarian task force on Syria, where he said that many member states pledged support for the attempt to reach Deir al-Zor.

Russia is Syria’s main ally in the five-year war, while Western and Arab states support rebels fighting to topple President Bashar al-Assad.

The U.N. estimates there are 486,700 people in around 15 besieged areas of Syria, and 4.6 million in hard-to-reach areas. In some, starvation deaths and severe malnutrition have been reported.

“We hope to be able to reach the remaining areas in the next days,” Egeland said, adding the group would meet again in a week.

Britain’s foreign minister Philip Hammond said in a statement: “Starvation of civilians as a method of combat is unacceptable. The international community and particularly Russia, which has unique influence, must put pressure on the Assad regime to lift sieges and grant full humanitarian access.”

In the past 24 hours, 114 U.N. trucks delivered life-saving food and medical supplies to 80,000 people in five besieged areas, enough for one month, Egeland said.

These were Madaya, Zabadani and Mouadamiya al-Sham near Damascus, which are under siege by government forces, and the villages of al-Foua and Kefraya in Idlib province, surrounded by rebel fighters.

It marked the “beginning of the task” assigned by ministers from major and regional powers who met a week ago in Munich.

But some “vital medical items” were not delivered, he said.

A spokesman for the World Health Organization (WHO) said that government forces had removed some medicines for emergency and trauma care from supplies bound for Mouadamiya, but had allowed a hemodialysis machine for diabetics, medicines and nutritional supplements.

(Reporting and writing by Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva; additional reporting by Gwladys Fouche; Editing by Dominic Evans and Katharine Houreld)

United States wants NATO to step up fight against Islamic State

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – The United States is pressing NATO to play a bigger role against Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, putting Washington at odds with Germany and France which fear the strategy would risk confrontation with the alliance’s old Cold War foe Russia.

All 28 NATO allies are already part of a 66-nation anti-Islamic State coalition, so the United States is looking to NATO as an institution to bring its equipment, training and the expertise it gained leading a coalition in Afghanistan.

“It is worth exploring how NATO, as NATO, could make an appropriate contribution, leveraging for example its unique capabilities, such as force generation,” U.S. Secretary of Defense Ash Carter said after meeting allies at NATO headquarters in Brussels last week and referring to NATO’s know-how in drumming-up troops, planes and ships from allies.

Seeking to recapture the Islamic State strongholds of Raqqa in Syria and Mosul in Iraq, Washington wants a bigger European response to the chaos and failing states near Europe’s borders.

Carter’s call for NATO’s help came as defense ministers from the anti-Islamic State coalition met last week at NATO headquarters in Brussels for the first time, albeit with NATO insignia removed from the walls.

Despite support from Britain, the U.S. push has not been received well by France and Germany.

Given Russia’s concerns over NATO expansion in eastern Europe, Paris and Berlin are worried that deeper NATO involvement in Syria could be taken by Moscow as a provocation that the alliance is seeking to extend its influence.

As the Russian-backed Syrian government advance nears NATO’s southeastern border, growing hostility between Russia and Turkey only makes some members of the alliance more reluctant, diplomats say.

Notwithstanding an agreement between Russia and the United States to avoid accidental military air incidents, France and Germany worry Russia’s targeting of opposition groups other than Islamic State increases the risks.

“NATO and Russia would not be fighting a common enemy,” a NATO diplomat said.

NON-COMBAT OPTIONS

Carter has sought to distinguish between Syria’s civil war and the fight against Islamic State, saying the campaign against the militant group will go on regardless, and has pushed allies to accelerate their efforts.

In that vein, Washington tested waters by making a request for NATO to provide its surveillance AWACS aircraft to the anti-Islamic State coalition fighting militants in Syria.

Germany pushed back on the AWACS request. That has forced a compromise by which NATO will send the planes to allied countries so as to free-up allies to send more of their own equipment to fight Islamic State in Syria, diplomats said.

France also sought assurances that the AWACS request did not mean NATO as an institution was being involved more deeply in the anti-Islamic State coalition.

Still, NATO Supreme Allied Commander General Philip Breedlove said planning for a bigger alliance role was “a natural shift … a natural evolvement of the thinking.”

“All our nations are under greater pressure, so this is just beginning. There is no detail but there are lots of opportunities that are being considered,” he said.

NATO involvement in Syria could help answer critics who say the alliance has watched passively as Russia has widened its role there. It could also address concerns expressed by southern allies, such as Spain, Italy and Portugal, that NATO does not have a strategy to address risks on the Mediterranean, the entry point for huge numbers of people fleeing conflict in the Middle East.

British Defense Secretary Michael Fallon said NATO might not yet be ready to move ahead along the lines suggested by Washington, “but the very fact that we brought together 45 members of the anti-IS coalition, inside NATO headquarters, shows you that we want to see a stronger governance of the coalition.”

“We want to be able to measure the progress of the campaign and to review it more regularly,” Fallon told Reuters.

For the moment, discussions on various options include more NATO training of Iraqi troops and police, as well as strengthening government departments in areas taken back from Islamic State, according a U.S. defense official.

The United States has made clear it does not see a role for Western combat troops. “Territory retaken from ISIL (Islamic State) has to be occupied and governed by people who are from the area and want to live there,” Carter said.

(Additional reporting by Phil Stewart in Washington and Sabine Siebold in Berlin; Editing by Robin Pomeroy)