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Libya’s self-declared government in control of the capital Tripoli has launched air strikes on Islamic State fighters in the city of Sirte, officials and witnesses said on Monday.
Officials said the late Sunday night attacks were on a building where fighters had gathered, but gave no details of casualties. Witnesses reported they were accurate and said wounded militants had been taken to hospital.
A suicide bomber and several gunmen staged a brazen attack on the Afghan parliament on June 22, killing two civilians in an assault claimed by the Taliban, while in the north a second district in two days fell to the militants.
Police said later that the attackers had been killed and all lawmakers were safe, but the large-scale assault on parliament and the loss of ground in the north underscored the challenges posed by Taliban militants following the departure of most foreign forces at the end of last year.
Al-Shabaab militants launched a major suicide attack on Sunday against a military intelligence base in the capital Mogadishu, setting off a car bomb before storming inside, security officials said.
Somalia’s interior ministry said the three attackers were all killed in the raid, and that Somali security forces who fought them suffered no casualties.
An alliance of Tuareg-led rebels and the Malian government signed a peace deal on Saturday meant to draw a line under a 2012 uprising and allow the authorities to focus on tackling Islamist militants in the desert north.
The Algerian-brokered deal, signed by a representative of the rebel Coordination of Movements of Azawad (CMA), grants greater autonomy to sparsely populated northern Mali in a bid to end a cycle of four uprisings since independence from France in 1960.
Egyptian government forces have carried out separate operations in the violence-plagued Sinai Peninsula, killing more than a dozen Takfiri militants.
A local security source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said on Saturday that army tanks and artillery units pounded the bases of Velayat Sinai militants, previously known as Ansar Bait al-Maqdis, south of the town of Sheikh Zuweid, located about 334 kilometers (214 miles) northeast of the capital, Cairo, on Friday, killing 15 extremists.
