KABUL (MEP) At least 40 people killed when US air strike hits ISIS group in Libya, officials said.
“The US conducted an air strike early this morning (Libya time) against an ISIS group training camp near Sabratha, Libya, that likely killed ISIS operative Noureddine Chouchane,” a US official said, using an alternative acronym for the IS group.
In a statement issued after the raid, the Pentagon said it was “assessing the results of the operation and [we] will provide additional information as and when appropriate”.
Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook said Chouchane and other jihadists had been planning attacks against US and other Western interests, and said the mission had been launched from British air base RAF Lakenheath.
“I was satisfied that its destruction makes us all safer, and I personally authorized the US use of our bases,” British Defense Secretary Michael Fallon said in a statement.
According to Hussein al-Dawadi, an official in the city, located near the border with Tunisia, a jihadist safe house was destroyed in the dawn raid in Sabratha about 70 kilometers west of Tripoli. He told AFP that 41 people had been killed in the attack.
In June 2015, an attack on a beach resort near the Tunisian city of Sousse killed 38 tourists including 30 Britons. That followed an attack on the National Bardo Museum in Tunis in March 2015 that killed 21 tourists and a policeman.
Both attacks were claimed by the IS group, which the United States is also targeting with air strikes in Syria and Iraq.
