| Submit your comments on this article |
| Africa North |
| Misrata municipality slammed for moving against Islamist militants |
| 2017-01-02 |
| [Libya Herald] A high-profile Misratan militia leader is understood to have declared Misrata Municipal Council out business and said that the city should now be run by its military council. The statement by Saleh Badi of al-Marsa Brigade comes as the council seeks to close down hard boy Islamist militia camps. This has prompted the Benghazi Shoura Council, which is currently located in Misrata, to protest that it has no relations with Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allaharound with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not reallyMoslems.... nor al-Qaeda terrorism, the Moslem Brüderbund nor the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group. The BSC insisted that it had nothing to do with political and regional conflicts and said that the council’s move was aimed at killing off "all honest revolutionary fighters". Nevertheless, analysts believe that the BSC is virtually identical to the Benghazi Revolutionaries’ Shoura Council whose fighters are now surrounded with their IS and Ansar al-Sharia ...a Salafist militia which claims it is not part of al-Qaeda, even though it works about the same and for the same ends. There are groups of the same name in Libyaand Yemen, with the Libyan versions currently most active. Tunisia's Shabaab al-Tawhid started out an Ansar al-Sharia and changed its name in early 2014. It still uses the old name now and then, probably because the stationery's not all used up and the web site hasn't expired yet... allies in three small areas of Benghazi. Resistance to the Libyan National Army in Benghazi for the last two years has been sustained by the regular maritime delivery of supplies from Misrata. However on two occasions, a pair of vessels being used on these runs has been blown up and sunk alongside the same dock at the Libyan Iron and Steel Works. Islamist leaders have recently taken to meeting near the steel works which lied to the east of the city. It remains unclear how the boats were sabotaged but the first attack appears to have been carried out with limpet mines. Unlike IS and Ansar al-Sharia, the BRSC has not been declared a terrorist group. There are also thought to be strong links with a third hard boy Islamist group, the Benghazi Defence Brigade. Commanded by Mustafa Sharksi, who led revolutionary forces in Misrata in 2011, the BDB launched a quixotic action pushing a relief column from Ajdabiya toward the besieged Ganfouda enclave to the south west of Benghazi. It was broken up by Meanwhile the Misratan Third Force claims to have tightened its siege on the Brak al-Shatti airbase taken by pro-LNA forces at the start of December. A Third Force front man said that an attack this morning on the southern airbase had included Grad rocket strikes. He maintained that imported muscle were among the base’s defenders. |
| Posted by:Fred |