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| Mabrook Oil Field in Libya Under Attack |
Following a report Wednesday that “unknown gunmen” stormed the al-Mabrook oil field in Libya, the jihadist army ISIS claimed responsibility, confirming warnings by a Libyan ambassador that ISIS covets Libya as a global terror base.
“Insufficient attention is paid in the West to the ISIS’ creeping expansion in Libya, where the jihadis are focusing on capturing oil fields, as in Syria,” said retired U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Paul Vallely, a founding member of the Citizens’ Commission on Benghazi.WND previously reported the Citizens’ Commission on Benghazi’s interim report concluding that the Obama administration rejected an offer by Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi to abdicate and instead armed militia affiliated with al-Qaida and the Muslim Brotherhood to oust Gadhafi by military force.
Vallely noted the al-Mabrook oil field, south of Sirte, is one of the largest in Libya.
As a consequence, Libya has become destabilized, with jihadist militia ruling many areas of the country by force.
“Libya has become a nightmare for everyone,” said Mabruk Derbésh, Ph.D., a university professor in economics at Tripoli University for seven years before the current chaos. “Today, as a result, the situation in Libya is demoralizing not just for outsiders and political analysts around the world, but also and notably for Libyans whose hopes for better life has turned into a nightmare constructed beneath the hardcovers of a Stephen Kings’ novel.”
ISIS is showing a regional presence that extends far beyond Syria and Iraq, the head of the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency, Gen. Vincent Stewart, disclosed Tuesday at a briefing to the House Armed Forces Committee.
At least 20 terrorist organizations in Egypt, Libya and Algeria had recently joined ISIS and were operating under its orders, Stewart said.
In his prepared testimony, Stewart said that with “affiliates in Algeria, Egypt, Libya, the group is beginning to assemble a growing international footprint that includes ungoverned and under governed areas.”
“Similarly, the flow of foreign fighters into, and out of, Syria and Iraq – many of whom are aligned with [ISIS] – is troubling. In 2015, we expect [ISIS] to continue its outreach to other elements of the global extremist movement, and to continue benefitting from a robust foreign terrorist fighter flow.”
Jihadists of the Ansr Bayt al-Maqdis, a Sinai-based terror group that swore allegiance to ISIS last year, launched four separate attacks in the northern Sinai Peninsula last week. The attackers used mortars and car bombs that targeted military and police sites, resulting in at least 30 people dead, including several civilians, according to medical and security officials on the scene.
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi was forced to cut short a visit to Ethiopia to attend a summit of the African Union to direct the Egyptian army attacks on terrorist hideouts in the Sinai.
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