Tag Archives: ISIS

Coalition now training brigades that will fight ISIS in Mosul, spokesman says

The United States-led coalition against the Islamic State is currently helping the Iraqi Security Forces put together the force that will try to retake the city of Mosul, a spokesman said Friday.

Col. Steve Warren, the spokesman for Operation Inherent Resolve, made the announcement while addressing a news briefing in Washington. He was speaking via video link from Baghdad.

Warren told reporters it would still be “many months” before the Iraqi Security Forces began their campaign to recapture Mosul, which the Islamic State has occupied since June 2014.

“Right now our focus is ‘Let’s start training some brigades. Let’s start building some combat power. Let’s continue to train some police and start building up some combat power,’” he said.

Mosul is the capital of Nineveh province in northern Iraq and is one of the nation’s largest cities.

Warren told reporters the coalition still needs to assemble approximately 10 brigades, consisting of some 2,000 to 3,000 people in all, and wanted to first place them through additional training.

A basic training process takes eight weeks, Warren told reporters, with supplemental options for people like medics or snipers. But the number of troops that can be trained at once has varied.

“Over the last month or so, we’ve gotten about 900 police officers and roughly two brigades through training,” Warren told reporters. “This was the most graduates that we’ve had in a month. There’s been weeks or months where it’s been significantly less.”

He said the coalition has trained about 20,000 members of the Iraqi Security Forces, including police and tribal fighters. But he said even the ones who helped secure a key victory at Ramadi, a city that had been under Islamic State control, should receive additional training before Mosul.

“We believe that all of the forces that we’ve already trained and run through Ramadi are certainly capable of moving to Mosul, but we have made a decision that we want to run them through another cycle of training,” Warren told reporters. “Are they trained? Yes. Could they go to Mosul now? Yes. But we would prefer to give them additional training before they go.”

Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province, was captured by the Islamic State last year.

Iraqi officials announced that the military had raised the nation’s flag over a key government complex in Ramadi late in December, and forces have been working to secure outlying parts of the city ever since. On Friday, Warren told reporters that those efforts were continuing.

Warren also told reporters the coalition launched 676 airstrikes against the Islamic State in January, 522 of them in Iraq and 154 in Syria. Most of them were concentrated near Ramadi, Mosul and Raqqa, the Syrian city which the Islamic State considers its capital.

Man who allegedly gave hacked personal info to Islamic State appears in court

A man accused of hacking the personal information of more than 1,300 federal employees and military members and releasing them to the Islamic State made his first appearance in a United States court on Wednesday, prosecutors said.

Ardit Ferizi, a 20-year-old Kosovo citizen, faces charges related to terrorism, hacking and identity theft, the Department of Justice said in a statement.

Ferizi was living in Malaysia last October when local law enforcement detained him at the United States’ request, prosecutors said. He later waived extradition.

According to a criminal complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Ferizi is believed to be the leader of a Kosovar hacking group. He’s accused of hacking a United States-based online retailer’s server, stealing the personal information of about 100,000 people and then sending the data of 1,351 military personnel and federal employees to members of the Islamic State.

A pro-Islamic State Twitter account posted a link to the information in August, prosecutors allege, and “names, e-mail addresses, e-mail passwords, locations and phone numbers” of the 1,351 employees were visible in a 30-page document that included a warning message.

According to the complaint, part of the document stated: “we are in your emails and computer systems, watching and recording your every move, we have your names and addresses, we are in your emails and social media accounts, we are extracting confidential data and passing on your personal information to the soldiers of the khilafah, who soon with the permission of Allah will strike at your necks in your own lands!”

Court records indicate charges against Ferizi include providing material support to the Islamic State, unauthorized access to a computer and aggravated identity theft.

If convicted, prosecutors said he could face up to 35 years in prison.

“As alleged, Ardit Ferizi is a terrorist hacker who provided material support to ISIL by stealing the personally identifiable information of U.S. service members and federal employees and providing it to ISIL for use against those employees,” Assistant Attorney General John P. Carlin said in a statement released after Ferizi was arrested in October. “This case is a first of its kind and, with these charges, we seek to hold Ferizi accountable for his theft of this information and his role in ISIL’s targeting of U.S. government employees.”

Ferizi is the latest individual who has been charged with Islamic State-related crimes in the United States. In December, a report from George Washington University’s Program on Extremism said at least 71 individuals were accused of such offenses since March 2014.

Syrian al Qaeda affiliate ‘much more dangerous’ than ISIS, new report says

While the United States continues its military campaign against the Islamic State, a new report charges that a different terrorist organization poses a greater long-term threat to the country.

Jabhat al Nusra, a Syrian al Qaeda affiliate, “is much more dangerous to the U.S. than the ISIS model in the long run,” according to a report released Friday by the Institute for the Study of War and the American Enterprise Institute.

“Any strategy that leaves Jabhat al Nusra in place will fail to secure the American homeland,” the report cautions.

The report offers a scathing critique of the United States’ anti-terrorism efforts in Iraq and Syria, saying the military campaign “largely ignores” Jabhat al Nusra, a group that “will almost certainly cause the current strategy in Syria to fail.”

It also argues the challenges facing the United States have been oversimplified, and warns a “collapse of world order” could allow the Islamic State and al Qaeda to grow stronger.

The report’s authors argue the United States must choose a new strategy, writing “passivity abroad will facilitate the continued collapse of the international order, including the global economy on which American prosperity and the American way of life depend.”

According to the report, Jabhat al Nusra differs from the Islamic State in its ideologies and practices. While the Islamic States seizing cities and imposes its will on civilians, brutally mistreating anyone who dissents, Jabhat al Nusra has taken a friendlier approach. It has aligned with several groups that oppose Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, a key point of contention in the nation’s ongoing civil war, and provided those groups with “advanced military capabilities.”

In doing so, the report says Jabhat al Nusra “has established an expansive network of partnerships with local opposition groups that have grown either dependent on or fiercely loyal to the organization.” The institutes charge the front has become so engaged with the opposition, it’s now “poised to benefit the most” from the downfall of the Islamic State and Assad’s removal.

“The likeliest outcome of the current strategy in Syria, if it succeeds, is the de facto establishment and ultimate declaration of a Jabhat al Nusra emirate in Syria that has the backing of a wide range of non-al Qaeda fighting forces and population groups,” the report states. Such an emirate would be a key component of al Qaeda’s global terror network, providing manpower and resources to other affiliates while “exporting violence into the heart of the West.”

The report calls al Qaeda and the Islamic State “existential threats” to Europe and the United States, and concludes that while the groups don’t currently have the ability to topple the West, they — along with broader turmoil in the world — threaten the way of life in those nations.

The report argues there are several public misconceptions about national security in the United States, namely that the Islamic State is the nation’s only enemy. The situation is far more complex, the report argues, and stretches far beyond the borders of the Middle East.

Groups such as the Islamic State and Al Qaeda are benefitting from events such as North Korea’s nuclear testing, Russia’s annexation of Crimea and Europe’s ongoing migrant crisis, the report’s authors wrote, calling them “symptoms of a collapsing world order” that exacerbate the threat.

Conflicting policies of Iran, Russia and China have also helped fuel the collapse, the report says.

“The collapse of world order creates the vacuums that allow … organizations such as al Qaeda and ISIS to amass resources to plan and conduct attacks on scales that could overwhelm any defenses the United States might raise,” the report states. “Even a marginal increase in such attacks could provoke Western societies to impose severe controls on the freedoms and civil liberties of their populations that would damage the very ideals that must most be defended.”

Leading Iraqi Shi’ite says Islamic State is shrugging off U.S. air strikes

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Flush with cash and weapons, Islamic State is attracting huge numbers of foreign fighters to Iraq and Syria and withstanding U.S.-led air strikes that are failing to hit the right targets, a powerful Iraqi Shi’ite paramilitary leader told Reuters in an interview.

Hadi al-Amiri also said Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was alive and in Iraq, despite reports that he had been wounded.

“Many of its leadership have been killed but one should know that Daesh (IS) is still strong,” said Amiri, leader of the Badr Organization whose armed wing has been fighting alongside Iraqi security forces to recapture territory seized by IS.

“Their attacks are still daring and swift and their morale is high. They still have money and weapons.”

Amiri delivered a damning assessment of the air strikes that the United States and its allies have been conducting against Islamic State for almost 18 months.

He said these had failed to dislodge IS because they failed to target its vital structure. Diplomats say the United States has been held back partly by the difficulty of avoiding civilian casualties.

“Today Daesh is a state, it has command centers, their locations are known, their logistics are known,” Amiri said. “Its leadership is known, its military convoys are known, its training camps are known. Until now we have not seen effective air strikes.”

He said the ultra-hardline insurgents had secured sophisticated U.S.-made anti-tank weapons including TOW missiles through Gulf Arab states. And he ridiculed the idea that Western powers could ensure arms only reached moderate rebel groups.

“They (rebels) did not capture these missiles, they were supplied by America, Saudi Arabia and Gulf states under the pretext of arming the moderate opposition in Syria. Who is the moderate opposition? Ahrar al-Sham? Jaish al-Islam? Nusra or Daesh?” he asked, reeling off the names of competing Islamist factions.

“All of them are terrorists,” he said. “Any moderate factions in Syria are weak. Even if they are supplied with weapons, Daesh seizes them.”

Military aid from states including Saudi Arabia has been supplied to Syrian rebels fighting under the banner of the Free Syrian Army in western Syria, and some of these groups have received military training from the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. The training has included how to use TOW missiles, supplied via Turkey and Jordan.

GOVERNMENT FIGHTBACK

Shi’ite paramilitaries like Amiri’s have played a vital role in helping Iraqi security forces recover lost territory from IS, which seized a string of major cities in 2014. When the militants declared that year that they had established an Islamic caliphate across parts of Iraq and Syria, he left a senior government post and rushed to the frontlines.

Since then, the government forces and their paramilitary allies have regained control of key cities — Tikrit, Ramadi and Baiji — with the support of the U.S.-led air strikes.

But he said there were more obstacles ahead before they could launch a battle to recapture Mosul, the country’s second city and the biggest under Islamic State control. Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi and his predecessor have long pledged to “liberate” Mosul but their plans have been repeatedly delayed.

“There are preparatory operations to retake Mosul but other operations have a priority. We want to go to Mosul with the reassurance that Baghdad is safe and all the provinces in the north and the south are safe. This is the main reason that delayed us advancing toward Mosul,” Amiri said.

“We have a decision not to enter the city of Mosul. We will surround it from outside and leave its people and its tribes to take part while we conduct the siege.”

SECTARIAN SPLIT

Amiri said Sunni-Shi’ite tensions galvanized by the war in Iraq and neighboring Syria were swelling the ranks of Islamic State.

The bombing of a Shi’ite shrine housing the tombs of two imams in the Iraqi city of Samarra in 2006 was the trigger for the worst sectarian carnage to engulf Iraq in the past decade, and now the Syria conflict has splintered the Middle East along the faultline dividing the two main denominations of Islam.

Syria has become a battlefield in a proxy war between President Bashar al-Assad’s main ally, Shi’ite Iran, backed by Russia, and his Sunni enemies in Turkey and Gulf Arab states, supported by the West.

“There is no terrorist organization with the ability to recruit and organize youths like Daesh does. We should know our enemy accurately and precisely to be able to defeat them,” Amiri said.

“Daesh has no problem recruiting. Foreign fighters are still flocking in huge numbers to Iraq and Syria via Turkey,” he added. He accused Saudi Arabia of being the breeding ground of the ultra-hardline Wahhabi ideology embraced by IS and other al Qaeda-affiliated groups.

“Where does this fundamentalist, extremist Islamist ideology, come from? Where was it nurtured? Its origin is Saudi Arabia,” he said, adding “we need to combat this (Daesh) ideology before we dry out its funding.”

Amiri’s Badr fighters fought on Iran’s side in the 1980-88 war against Iraq’s Sunni dictator, Saddam Hussein. The militia came to dominate much of southern Iraq after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003 that toppled Saddam, and during the sectarian fighting that followed.

“I fought Saddam Hussein for more than 20 years. If I knew the alternative to Saddam was al Qaeda, Nusra or Daesh, I would have fought with Saddam against them,” he said.

“Saddam executed more than 16 family members … but there is nothing worse than these extremist groups. They are a real danger to the whole world.”

(Writing by Samia Nakhoul and Stephen Kalin; Editing by Mark Trevelyan)

Islamic State bombing kills at least two dozen in Syria’s Homs

BEIRUT (Reuters) – A bomb attack claimed by Islamic State in the Syrian government-controlled city of Homs killed at least 24 people on Tuesday.

The governor of Homs said the first of two explosions was caused by a car bomb which targeted a security checkpoint. A suicide bomber then set off an explosive belt, state media reported.

“We know we are targets for terrorists, especially now the (Syrian) army is advancing and local reconciliation agreements are being implemented,” the governor told Reuters by phone.

Seventeen people are still in hospital, one of whom is in a critical condition, the governor said.

Syrian state TV earlier reported 22 people had died and more than 100 people had been injured.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group put the death toll at 29. It said those killed in the explosions, which took place in a mostly Alawite district, included 15 members of government forces and pro-government militiamen.

Syria’s nearly five-year-old civil war pits President Bashar al-Assad, a member of the minority Alawite sect, against mainly Sunni Muslim rebels and jihadi fighters.

Islamic State said in a statement its attack had killed at least 30 people.

The Syrian army and allied forces have been battling Islamic State in areas to the east and southeast of Homs city. They recently took back several villages including Maheen 50 miles southeast of the city.

(Reporting by Omar Fahmy in Cairo, Kinda Makieh in Damascus and Lisa Barrington in Beirut; Editing by Tom Perry and Dominic Evans)

Islamic State possibly planning more attacks in Europe, Europol warns

The Islamic State is believed to be planning additional terrorist attacks against targets in France and the European Union, according to a new report from the union’s law enforcement agency.

Europol issued a public report on the Islamic State on Monday, writing “there is every reason to expect” the organization, or those inspired by it, would carry out another attack. The agency also wrote there’s a chance of attacks from lone-actor terrorists, or other religiously inspired groups.

The report, which does not mention a specific future terrorist threat, draws its conclusions from a meeting of more than 50 counterterrorism officials from throughout the European Union. The discussions were held November 30 and December 1, a little more than two weeks after the Islamic State killed 130 people during Nov. 13 terrorist attacks at various locations across Paris.

The report highlights what Europol believes is an adjustment in the Islamic State’s game plan.

It indicates the Paris attacks, as well as the investigation into them, “appear to indicate a shift towards a broader strategy of (the Islamic State) going global,” and evidence suggests the group is planning “special forces style attacks” in foreign countries. It warns of the possibility of additional attacks against France, or other European Union nations, “in the near future.”

It was released the same day that Europol opened its European Counter Terrorism Centre in The Hague, Netherlands. In a news release announcing the opening, Europol said the continent “is currently facing the most significant terrorist threat in over 10 years,” and the center would help officials share terrorism intelligence and coordinate responses to any potential acts of violence.

The report offers insight into Europol’s intelligence on the Islamic State’s recruitment, training, financing and planning methods.

It addresses public fears that terrorists are exploiting the ongoing migrant crisis to enter Europe, in some cases posing as refugees to get into the union undetected. The report says there is “no concrete evidence” that terrorists are systematically using the refugee system that way, though acknowledged it’s possible some Syrian refugees “may be vulnerable” to radicalization.

The report also outlines how quickly the Islamic State can recruit foreigners — particularly younger people, who can be more impressionable and vulnerable. It indicates 20 percent or more of the Islamic State’s foreign fighters had been diagnosed with a mental problem before joining the group, and up to 80 percent of the foreign fighters had some kind of criminal record.

Europol’s report indicated that attacks aren’t necessarily coordinated from Syria, an Islamic State stronghold, and that the leaders of local cells are given “tactical freedom” to make adjustments as they see fit. It notes the Islamic State’s documented ability to “strike at will,” but noted the group has a preference for attacking soft targets — those unable to defend themselves — to kill as many people as possible.

The report noted similarities between the Paris attacks and attacks against Mumbai in 2008, as both had comparable targets, weapons and death tolls.

Europol says cyber attacks or plots against power grids or similar targets “is currently not a priority” for the Islamic State, though the report indicates it’s possible the organization could pursue “cyber-attacks targeting critical infrastructures and state security” against Western nations in the future.

U.S. military says decisive action needed against Islamic State in Libya

PARIS (Reuters) – The top U.S. military officer said on Friday urgent and decisive military action was needed to halt the spread of Islamic State in Libya, warning the jihadist group wanted to use the country as a regional base.

Marine General Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, avoided detailing any recommendations he might make in Washington. His goals included better leveraging support in the region from allies, building up local forces capable of defending Libya, and strengthening its neighbors.

“You want to take decisive military action to check ISIL’s expansion and at the same time you want to do it in such a way that’s supportive of a long-term political process,” Dunford, using an acronym for Islamic State, told a small group of reporters.

Islamic State forces have attacked Libya’s oil infrastructure and established a foothold in the city of Sirte, exploiting a prolonged power vacuum in a country where two rival government are battling for supremacy.

The political chaos has also slowed the international community’s ability to partner with the loose alliances of armed brigades of rebels who once fought veteran leader Muammar Gaddafi, who was overthrown in 2011.

Western powers hope stability will come via a new unity government announced on Tuesday, though two of its nine members have already rejected it.

“I think it’s pretty clear to all of us — French, U.S. alike — that whatever we do is going to be in conjunction with the new government,” Dunford said after talks with France’s military, which is active in parts of Africa battling Islamic extremists.

“My perspective is we need to do more,” Dunford said, He would weigh factors including the ability to identify the right forces on the ground to support.

He also suggested that the willingness among Libyans to have foreign military forces “in there, taking the fight to ISIL” would also be important in deliberations about the way forward.

He said he wanted to move soon, but acknowledged that, when it came to Libya, “quickly is weeks not hours”, adding that the U.S. military leadership owed President Barack Obama and the U.S. defense secretary ideas about the “way ahead” for dealing with the militant group.

The United States says it killed Islamic State’s senior leader in Libya, known as Abu Nabil, in a November air strike by F-15 aircraft.

It believes he was operating in Libya with the support of Islamic State’s core leadership in Iraq and Syria, in a likely sign of the country’s strategic importance to the group.

“So as I look at Libya, I look at Libya as an ISIL platform from which they can conduct malign activity across Africa,” Dunford said.

(Reporting by Phil Stewart; editing by Andrew Roche and John Stonestreet)

U.S. gives troops broader order to strike ISIS in Afghanistan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. military commanders have been given the authority to target Islamic State fighters in Afghanistan, the Pentagon said on Thursday, the first such order beyond Iraq and Syria, where the militants control parts of both countries.

The U.S. State Department said last week that it had designated Islamic State’s offshoot in Afghanistan, known as Islamic State-Khorasan, as a foreign terrorist organization.

U.S. forces could previously strike Islamic State in Afghanistan but it was under more narrow circumstances, such as for protection of troops.

Senator John McCain of Arizona, a Republican who chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee, said the administration of President Barack Obama, a Democrat, “seems to be waking up to the fact that more than a year into the U.S. military campaign, ISIL’s reach is global and growing.”

McCain told a hearing on Thursday that the authorization given by the White House was much needed and “many of us may be interested to know that we confined our attacks on ISIL to Iraq and Syria.”

ISIL is another name for the Islamist militant group, which has supporters and sympathizers around the world who have carried out bombings and gun attacks on civilians, notably in Paris in November and San Bernardino, California, in December.

A Pentagon spokesman, Capt. Jeff Davis, said there had been an adjustment to the authorization for U.S. forces in Afghanistan, but he did not give details on when exactly it was given.

“As part of this mission, we will take action against any terrorist group that poses a threat to U.S. interests or the homeland, including members of ISIL-Khorasan,” Davis said.

Davis said there had been “some” strikes on the group in recent days.

The change in the authorization was first reported by the Wall Street Journal. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

According to the State Department, Islamic State-Khorasan was formed in January 2015, based in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region, made up of former members of the Pakistani Taliban and Afghan Taliban.

U.S. Army General John Campbell, who leads international forces in Afghanistan, has said Islamic State had coalesced over the last five or six months in Nangarhar and Kunar provinces and had been fighting the Taliban for several months.

(Reporting by Idrees Ali; editing by Grant McCool)

U.S. begins implementing restrictions on visa-free travel

United States officials have begun implementing new policies regarding the country’s Visa Waiver Program, the State Department announced Thursday.

The program allows citizens and nationals of 38 countries to visit the United States without obtaining a visa, provided they stay for fewer than 90 days.

Congress sought to reform the program in the wake of the Paris terrorist attacks.

The new laws prevent anyone who has visited Iran, Iraq, Syria or Sudan since March 1, 2011, or holds citizenship in one of those four countries, from entering the United States through the Visa Waiver Program. They will now have to apply for a visa at a U.S. embassy, a process that includes an in-person interview.

A White House fact sheet says 20 million people visit the United States under the Visa Waiver Program every year, and the program had utilized security checks designed to keep terrorists and other potential security threats out of the nation.

Those who sought to reform the program said there were shortcomings in that screening process, and Congress voted to approve the changes in December.

Representative Candice Miller (R-Michigan), who originally introduced the legislation, issued a statement when it was passed. She said the bill “improves our ability to identify and stop individuals who have traveled to terrorist hotspots to join ISIS and other like-minded organizations before they reach U.S. soil.”

In a news release, State Department officials said “the great majority” of people who use the Visa Waiver Program would not be affected by the changes.

The department added that Secretary of Homeland Security can waive the visa requirement for individuals who went to the aforementioned four countries on a case-by-case basis. People who traveled for diplomatic reasons, humanitarian work, military service or as a journalist may qualify for waivers.

Islamic State attack sets storage tanks ablaze at Libyan oil terminal

BENGHAZI/TRIPOLI, Libya (Reuters) – Islamic State militants set fire on Thursday to oil storage tanks in a fresh assault on Ras Lanuf terminal in northern Libya and the group threatened further attacks as they exploit a prolonged power vacuum in the large north African nation.

The chairman of the National Oil Corporation, Mustafa Sanalla, told reporters in Tripoli that Ras Lanuf – shut since December 2014 – would remain closed for a “long time” because of the damage inflicted on Thursday and in earlier attacks.

Libya remains dogged by violence and political turmoil nearly five years after the overthrow of veteran leader Muammar Gaddafi, with two rival governments and parliaments based in Tripoli and in the east as well as various armed factions vying for power and a share of the country’s oil wealth.

The Islamic State militants drove into the oil storage site early in the morning and clashed with security guards before retreating and firing from a distance to set four tanks on fire, NOC spokesman Mohamed al-Harari said.

A pipeline leading from the Amal oil field to the nearby Es Sider terminal, the biggest on Libya’s Mediterranean coast, was also targeted, said Mohamed al-Manfi, an energy official allied with Libya’s eastern-based government.

Ras Lanuf and Es Sider together have an export capacity of 600,000 barrels per day. They were processing about half of that before they were both closed in December 2014.

The NOC said the area was facing an “environmental catastrophe”, with huge columns of smoke billowing from the fires and damage to power lines supplying residential and industrial districts.

“Residents are trying to build a barrier to stop the oil and fire from reaching gas pipelines and water pipelines, and the main road,” the NOC’s Harari said.

Islamic State militants have managed to establish a foothold in the city of Sirte, which lies about 125 miles along the coast to the west of Ras Lanuf and Es Sider.

In a video posted on Islamic State’s official Telegram channel, fighter Abu Abdelrahman al-Liby said: “Today Es Sider port and Ras Lanuf and tomorrow the port of Brega and after the ports of Tobruk, Es Serir, Jallo, and al-Kufra.”

OIL PRODUCTION DISRUPTED

Libya’s current oil production stands at 362,000 barrels per day, he told Reuters. That is less than a quarter of a 2011 high of 1.6 million barrels per day, though production has not changed significantly in recent weeks.

Two weeks ago clashes between Islamic State and the Petroleum Facilities Guards who control the area around Es Sider and Ras Lanuf left seven oil storage tanks damaged by fire and at least 18 guards dead.

At least 1.3 million barrels of oil were lost as a result of the clashes and up to 3 million barrels could be at risk because of the latest attack, said NOC spokesman Harari.

The NOC sent a tanker to remove oil from the terminals in an effort to prevent further damage, but guards prevented it from loading, citing security concerns.

On Thursday the NOC blamed the “intransigence” of the Petroleum Facilities Guards in blocking the shipment for the further damage it suffered from the latest attack.

The guards are led by a federalist who has supported Libya’s eastern government, but analysts say their loyalties are uncertain within the country’s complex pattern of allegiances.

(Additional reporting by Ali Abdelaty in Cairo and Aidan Lewis in Tunis; Writing by Aidan Lewis; Editing by Gareth Jones)