IS, armed men clash near Libyan capital, four dead: local official

American F-15E fighter-bombers on Friday struck an Islamic State group training camp in rural Libya near the Tunisian border, killing at least 40 people, probably including an IS operative considered responsible for deadly attacks in Tunisia previous year, USA and local officials said.

The plane carrying the remains of the two employees of the Serbian Embassy in Libya, Sladjana Stankovic and Jovica Stepic, arrived in Belgrade at 7:25 p.m. on Tuesday.

“It is officially confirmed that the two embassy staff were killed in air raids”, he said.

He described the deaths as “terrible collateral damage” and said Serbia had been close to securing their release.

“I don’t see any appetite in the U.S. for going back into Libya in any sustained way”, Hill said.

The mayor of Sabratha, Hussein al-Thwadi, said the death toll from Friday’s strikes had risen to 49.

Five years on from the uprising that toppled Muammar Gaddafi, Libya is plagued by instability, and militants have taken advantage of a security vacuum to expand their presence.

The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria’s (ISIS) branch in Libya is deepening its reach across a wide area of Africa, attracting new recruits from countries like Senegal that had been largely immune to its propaganda – and forcing African authorities and their Western allies to increase efforts to combat the fast-moving threat.

But Sabratha’s mayor said the building was “just a house”, adding: “The house was used for meetings and other acts but not training”. New U.S. and allied intelligence assessments say IS commanders in Libya are seizing territory there, starting to tax its residents and setting up quasi-government institutions.

Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook said the U.S. is determined to stop IS from “gaining traction” in Libya.

Meanwhile, the weakened Libyan transitional government issued a statement of condemnation against the USA airstrike that destroyed an alleged ISIS camp in Sabratha.

Another official said the United States believes Chouchane was killed.

A unity government has been nominated under a United Nations-backed plan but has yet to win approval or move to Libya. “Unfortunately, as a outcome of the attack against Isis in Libya, the two of them lost their lives”, Mr Dacic said, using another acronym for the Islamic State group.

Last June, it captured the coastal city of Sirte, east of Tripoli, and has since attacked coastal oil facilities and staged a string of suicide bombings.