US airstrikes hits ISIS targets in Libya

posted at 10:01 am on February 19, 2016 by Ed Morrissey

American warplanes struck an Islamic State camp in Libya early Friday, targeting a senior Tunisian operative linked to two major terrorist attacks in Tunisia last year. The operative, Noureddine Chouchane, was most likely killed in the strike, according to the Pentagon.
The airstrikes, on a camp outside Sabratha, about 50 miles west of Tripoli, killed at least 30 Islamic State recruits at the site, many of whom were believed to be from Tunisia, according to a Western official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss military operations. …
Mr. Chouchane was suspected of being a major Islamic State operative who helped organize an attack on the National Bardo Museum in Tunis that killed 22 people in March and another in June that killed 38 people at a beach in the coastal resort in Sousse. Mr. Chouchane was one of five fugitives for whom the Tunisian Interior Ministry issued arrest warrants after the museum attack.
The Western official said that the airstrikes on Friday morning were focused on Mr. Chouchane and did not represent the start of major new American war in a Muslim country. They were carried out by Air Force F-15E jets.

The airstrikes destroyed a large farmhouse outside Sabratha, a city near the Tunisia border, where suspected militant fighters had gathered to hear a religious leader, said Jamal Naji Zubia, the head of the foreign news media office in Tripoli in a telephone interview.
A possible key target in the attack was Noureddine Chouchane, an Islamic State operative who was believe to be key plotter the Tunisian attacks against popular tourist sites. It was not immediately clear whether Chouchane was among those killed.
Eastern Libya also was the site of a June 2015 airstrikes seeking to target a most-wanted Algerian militant who had past ties to al-Qaeda, Mokhtar Belmokhtar. But U.S. officials still have not confirmed whether Belmokhtar was killed in the attack.

Tunisia, Libya’s neighbor which shares nearly 500 kilometers of border, has been worried for weeks about what they understood to be an “imminent” strike by the coalition. Tunisia fears “terrorists”,” arms traffickers and a flux of refugees onto its territory, and recently built nearly a 200-kilometer wall of sand and trenches to fortify its border. Nearly a million Libyans crossed the border into Tunisia during the 2011 uprising against Libyan strongman Moammar Khadafi.