A suicide car bomber blew himself up at a checkpoint near Libya’s western Misurata city yesterday, killing two guards, state news agency Lana quoted a military source as saying.
The attack, claimed by Islamic State, targeted forces from the port city whose troops are allied with a self-declared government controlling the capital Tripoli and western Libya.
Islamic State forces have profited from Libya’s turmoil, four years after the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi, to gain a foothold in the North African country while two rival governments battle for power and Libya’s oil wealth.
Yesterday’s attack “led to the killing and wounding of the enemies of God,” Islamic State said in a message on Twitter.
With Libya engulfed in strife, smugglers are increasingly free to pack migrants on to unsafe boats
A Reuters reporter saw several damaged cars at the checkpoint on the road east of Misurata towards Sirte, a central city seized by Islamic State in recent months.
Misurata forces had fought with Islamic State on Wednesday in Sirte. At least one person was killed and seven wounded.
Islamic State militants have in recent months claimed responsibility for several attacks including the storming of a Tripoli hotel and the murder of dozens of Egyptian and Ethiopian Christians.
Libya’s internationally recognised government and elected Parliament have been based in the east since a rival faction seized the capital in August and reinstated a previous assembly.
Islamic State for its part has also built up a presence in Derna, an eastern city known as jihadi hotspot, and the main eastern city of Benghazi.
Meanwhile, more than 900 migrants were rescued from three overcrowded boats en route to Europe from the Libyan coast, an Italian coast guard official said yesterday. One body was recovered. All the rescues were carried out on Wednesday, the official said, with no details about the one death or the migrants’ nationalities. No boats had yet been spotted yesterday as sea conditions worsened, he said.
With Libya engulfed in strife, people smugglers are increasingly free to pack migrants onto unsafe boats, and they are expected to push total arrivals in Italy for 2015 to 200,000, an increase of 30,000 on last year, according to an Interior Ministry projection.
Two Italian coast guard patrol boats and a merchant ship whose country of origin was not given saved 328 migrants from a boat in Maltese waters on Wednesday.
Refugees escaping war and political persecution, and economic migrants desperate for a better life have been pouring into Italy this year, with approximately 35,500 arriving there up to the first week of May, the UN refugee agency estimates. Also including arrivals in Greece, Spain and Malta, a total of 62,500 have reached Europe by boat, with Syrians making up a third and Afghans and Eritreans 10 per cent each.
The number of dead or missing this year is about 1,800 compared with 3,500 during the whole of last year, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees says.