By Maha Sulaiman.
Benghazi, 21 April 2016:
The spokesman from the Libyan National Army (LNA) chief of staff, Colonel Ahmed Mismari, says that LNA . . .[restrict]planes hit the convoy of Islamic State vehicles as it retreated from Derna yesterday and had killed “many” IS fighters.
The attack supposedly happened after the IS convoy, put at 32 vehicles, had arrived at Al-Mekhili, some 100 kilometres south west of Derna. There, he said, IS had found the petrol station closed and, desperate for fuel, had started shooting at it. They then continued further south. At this point, however, LNA aircraft were mobilised and bombed the vehicles.
Mismari did not say how many had been hit or how many casualties there had been other than “many”.
Following the IS pullout, the commander of the LNA’s 102 Brigade, Colonel Idris Eljali, was now in charge of Derna’s Fatiaeh area and District 400, Mismari added.
Asked whether the LNA was now going to try and take over the whole town, he said that Derna was not an immediate strategic objective. The objective now was Sirte.
However, there were negotiations by mediators with the Derna Revolutionaries Shoura Council (DRSC), he disclosed. It was being given a deadline by the army to hand over the town. He did not, however, disclose when the deadline was.
The DRSC is dominated by the local Abu Sleem Martyrs Brigade. This, Mismari claimed, was divided over dealing with the army. One part, he said, was totally opposed to the LNA. It regarded the army as “kuffar” (infidels). It and IS were, he stated, two sides of the same coin.
However, others in the brigade were more amenable, he said. They wanted to work with the army, but they were still extremists and were making demands about the army – for example, that it must contain no one deemed to be a Qaddafist.
Such demands were unacceptable, he said.
For his part, Abdulkarim Sabra, spokesman for the LNA’s Omar Mukhtar Operations Room which covers Derna and the surrounding region, is reported to have said that LNA aircraft had attacked DRSC positions at the town’s prison and its Sayida Khadija district on Wednesday evening. [/restrict]
