The Islamic State (IS) group has significantly expanded its control over Libya, fueling demand by the country’s warring parties for more arms to confront the threat, experts have told the UN Security Council.
The IS has successfully recruited young men from local tribes, offering them protection and benefits, but it has also enlisted military officers from the former regime of late Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi, said the report by the panel of experts who report to a UN sanctions committee.
IS jihadists have cemented their hold on the coastal city of Sirte, wiping out opposition and the group is “currently the most significant political and military actor in the region,” said the report which was submitted to the council on Wednesday.
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The extremist group has also made inroads in Tripoli and in the western city of Sabrata, boosting its presence through local recruitment and foreign fighters who transit through Turkey and Tunisia.
Extremists from sub-Saharan Africa have traveled through Sudan to join IS ranks in Sirte and Benghazi, the report said, confirming fears that the Libyan IS branch is seeking to draw recruits from other parts of the continent.
“The political and security vacuum has been further exploited by Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant [ISIL], which has significantly expanded its control over territory,” the report said, using another acronym for IS.
The report did not provide estimates of the number of IS fighters in Libya.
Libya was thrown into turmoil after a NATO-backed uprising that toppled longtime dictator Qaddafi in 2011.
The country has been under an arms embargo since then, but the report cited a recent transfer of MIG-21F jets to Tobruk, where the internationally recognized government is based.
The jets “appear to be consistent with those owned by Egypt,” the experts said. Cairo, however, told the panel its information on the transfer was “incorrect.”
The panel is continuing to investigate claims that Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and Sudan have also violated the embargo.
“The continuation of armed clashes and the expansion of ISIL have led to an increase in demand for military materiel,” said the report, which cited a “revival of external support” for the various factions.
With Libya in chaos, the UN has been struggling to set up a unity government that would be able to confront the threat from the IS.
Libya has had rival parliaments and governments since 2014, after an Islamist-led militia alliance overran Tripoli and forced the internationally recognized administration to flee to the remote east of the oil-rich nation.
In related news, the US-led coalition has carried out the first airstrikes on IS chemical weapons sites, the Pentagon said on Thursday, acting on crucial information from a captured senior insurgent.
The successful multiple bombings came as a result of intelligence from Sulayman Dawud al-Bakkar, also known as Abu Dawud, Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook said, confirming the name of the IS group operative said to be a chemical weapons expert for the extremists.
His capture by US special forces last month appears to be a major boon in the fight against the IS group in Iraq and Syria, and Cook said it had yielded almost immediate results.
Cook described Dawud as “ISIL’s emir of chemical and traditional weapons manufacturing.”
“His capture removed a key ISIL leader from the battlefield, and provided the coalition with important information about ISIL’s chemical weapons capabilities,” Cook said. “Through Dawud, the coalition learned details about ISIL’s chemical weapon facilities and production, as well as the people involved. The information has resulted in multiple coalition airstrikes that have disrupted and degraded ISIL’s ability to produce chemical weapons and will continue to inform our operations in the future.”
On Wednesday, Pentagon spokesman Jeff Davis declined to confirm that US forces had captured an IS chemical weapons expert.
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