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Iraqi Army comes under attack in Haditha

The Islamic State’s Anbar Division released a series of photos that purport to document the overrunning of Iraqi Army bases in the city of Haditha. Nineteen photographs captioned with "Charging at a number of barracks of the Savafid army in the city of Haditha" were released yesterday on the jihadist group’s Twitter feed. At least one military outpost appears to have been overrun in the attack. The exact location of the base was not disclosed. The photographs show a convoy of Islamic State technicals, or pickup trucks with machine guns mounted in the beds, advancing through the desert, stopping, and taking up position to fire on the outpost. The Islamic State deployed at least one mortar team during the attack. At one point, a squad of Islamic State fighters is photographed entering the base. The Iraqi combat outpost appears to have been manned by troops. The bodies of several […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Libya's Largest Oil Field to Make First Export

The first export from Libya’s largest oil field Sharara is due later Monday but production has fallen since last week , an official said. The expected shipment is the first tangible sign that a recent recovery in the country’s troubled oil industry could translate into extra supplies to global markets. Eni’s West Libyan Gas Project, Wafa oil field in Libya-the French firm also owns a share of the Sharara oil field that is due to make its first export on Monday 21 July. European Pressphoto Agency The reopening of two key Eastern terminals and of the Sharara field have been overshadowed by the pullout of oil expatriates following escalating violence in Tripoli’s airport . But a spokesman for Libya’s state-run National Oil Co. said that "shipment will start today" for Sharara’s oil. The field, located in Western Libya, resumed production 12 days ago but its initial supply was used […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Libya’s Largest Oil Field to Make First Export

The first export from Libya’s largest oil field Sharara is due later Monday but production has fallen since last week , an official said. The expected shipment is the first tangible sign that a recent recovery in the country’s troubled oil industry could translate into extra supplies to global markets. Eni’s West Libyan Gas Project, Wafa oil field in Libya-the French firm also owns a share of the Sharara oil field that is due to make its first export on Monday 21 July. European Pressphoto Agency The reopening of two key Eastern terminals and of the Sharara field have been overshadowed by the pullout of oil expatriates following escalating violence in Tripoli’s airport . But a spokesman for Libya’s state-run National Oil Co. said that "shipment will start today" for Sharara’s oil. The field, located in Western Libya, resumed production 12 days ago but its initial supply was used […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Clashes between rival militias in Libya kill 47

Clashes between rival Libyan militias fighting for control of the international airport in the capital, Tripoli, have killed 47 people over the past 24 hours, Libya’s Health Ministry said. The ministry said on its website late Sunday that the fighting also left 120 people wounded. It also said it had not yet received the full casualty report. The weeklong battle over the airport is being waged by a powerful militia from the western city of Zintan, which controls the facility, and Islamist-led militias, including fighters from Misrata, east of Tripoli. The clashes resumed Sunday after cease-fire efforts failed. Television footage broadcast Sunday showed a mortar shell striking a Libyan Arab Airlines plane and a column of black smoke billowing from inside the airport, which has been closed since last Monday. Libya is witnessing one of its worst spasms of violence since the ouster of longtime dictator […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Can Libya remain united?

Libya is evidently disintegrating as the daily escalation of violence is aimlessly continuing and it seems that there is no hope insight for a ceasefire of some sort. The situation is getting progressively from bad to worse, by the hour, as Libya is quickly heading back almost to the time of pre-unification of the country in the middle of the previous century. Many observers are rushing to history books to inquisitively review that part of Libya’s past in an attempt to understand what is currently happening in the country and in which direction is it going. One day in late 1991, my brother-in-law, the late Mansour Rashid Al Kikhya, first foreign minister of Muammar Gaddafi’s Libya, briefed me about that period of his country’s history, which he and a few hundred other young Libyans had aspired to build. They had in their sight the task of rebuilding a modern […]

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Libya truce shattered by fresh fighting

Fighting between powerful militias battling for control of Tripoli’s airport broke out again Friday, just hours after they had agreed a truce, an airport official and witnesses said. The clashes came a day after the government sought the United Nations’ help to prevent the country from becoming a “failed state.” “The airport was once again today hit by mortar fire which struck the security offices,” but caused no casualties, airport security official al-Jilani al-Dahech told AFP. Airport security forces returned fire, he said without giving further details. Libya’s main international airport has been closed since Sunday, with rockets causing damage to aircraft and the main terminal building amid warnings by officials that the facility could remain closed for months. The violence erupted when Islamist gunmen from the city of Misrata attacked anti-Islamist fighters from the city of Zintan who have been controlling the airport for the past […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Gunmen kill 21 Egyptian military border guards near Libya

Gunmen killed 21 Egyptian military border guards near the frontier with Libya on Saturday, highlighting a growing threat from an area that security officials say has become a haven for militants seeking to topple the Cairo government. Security officials said the assailants were smugglers. But an army spokesman said on his Facebook page that "terrorists" – the term authorities use to describe Islamist militants – were behind the attack. He said a weapons storage facility was blown up by a rocket-propelled grenade in an exchange of fire, killing the soldiers and wounding four others. The attack took place in Wadi al-Gadid governorate, which borders both Sudan and Libya. Two smugglers were killed in clashes with the guards, security officials said. Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has repeatedly expressed concerns about militants who have capitalized on the chaos in Libya and set up operations along the border. […]

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Toll Climbs in Fight for Syrian Gas Field

More than 100 people were killed in two days in a continuing fight between government forces and militants for control of a gas-production facility east of Homs, according to opposition activists and media outlets aligned with the regime. Among the casualties as of Sunday evening were at least 65 members of the regime’s forces, according to Syrian opposition activists, while the rest were fighters from the extremist group Islamic State. The fighting erupted after gunmen from Islamic State mounted an attack late Wednesday on the Al-Shaer gas field and production facility, located in the desert about 150 miles northeast of the capital Damascus. Over 270 guards, workers and members of a pro-regime paramilitary group known as the National Defense Force were killed in the initial attack […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Armed bandits demand water in dry northern India

Armed bandits are threatening villagers with death unless they deliver 35 buckets of water each day in northern India, where water is scarce thanks to an ongoing drought and a poor supply. So far, 28 villages have been obeying the order, taking turns to deliver what the bandits are calling a daily "water tax," police said. "Water itself is very scarce in this region. Villagers can hardly meet their demand," officer Suresh Kumar Singh said by telephone from Banda, a city on the southern border of central Uttar Pradesh state and caught within what is known in India as bandit country. Though the number of bandits has declined drastically in recent decades, India’s bandit tradition, which began more than 800 years ago when emperors still ruled, has continued in the hard-to-reach forests and mountains of the Bundelkhand region. The area is cut off from supply […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple