 | Wars in the World |
Daily News on Wars in the World and on New States
| FOLLOW US ON: FACEBOOK X FLIPBOARD TELEGRAM |
Libyan special forces said on Monday they had retaken the main military base in Benghazi from Islamist fighters that they have been battling since October, part of a wider struggle four years after the ousting of autocrat Muammar Gaddafi.
Special forces commander Wanis Bukhamada told Reuters by telephone that his troops had seized the army camp, on a road to the airport outside Libya’s second biggest city, as well as nearby offices belonging to state cellphone operator al-Madar.
Boko Haram staged an overnight assault on a border town in Niger, residents said Sunday, the second time the nation has come under attack by the extremists since Friday.
Islamist militant group Boko Haram, attacked a military base in eastern Niger, expanding its reign of terror across the region, witnesses said on Friday.
It is the first time the Nigeria-based insurgents launched an assault in Niger, after infiltrating northern Cameroon for the past few months, killing dozens of people.
Egyptian military air strikes killed 27 Islamic militants in Northern Sinai early on Friday, in one of the biggest security operations in the region months, security sources said.
Apache helicopters targeted militants from Sinai Province, a group that pledged allegiance to Islamic State, the ultra-hardline militants who have seized swathes of Iraq and Syria, the sources said.
Libyan national army on Thursday announced to have controlled Benghazi port after three months of bloodshed with the Islamist militants.
“The port, customs, passport control, the nearby Omar Khayyam Hotel and the North Benghazi Court are all under control by the battalion,” an army spokesperson said, without disclosing the casualties of the army.
Sixteen Libyan soldiers were killed and 38 wounded in clashes around an eastern Islamist stronghold and close to a key oil terminal, military officials said Tuesday.
“The army lost 11 soldiers… in violent clashes with radical Islamists after an army offensive launched on Monday” near the town of Derna, said Colonel Ahmed al-Mashari.
He said the Islamist fighters had suffered “heavy losses” in the skirmishes.
Suspected al-Shabaab gunmen attacked a police station in the Gulf of Aden Port City of Bossaso on Tuesday evening, Garowe Online reports.
Militants armed with rocket propelled grenades and AK 47 rifles carried out the pre-planned attack, destroying troop-transport vehicle and seriously wounding a soldier.