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Libyan forces claim Sirte port captured from Isis as street battles rage
Libyan forces claim Sirte port captured from Isis as street battles rage
(about 5 hours later)
Forces allied with Libya’s unity government claim they have recaptured the port in the Islamic State stronghold of Sirte, encircling jihadi fighters inside the city.
Libyan government forces fighting to oust Islamic State from Sirte, its last stronghold in the north African nation, have taken the strategic port area and pinned militants into a small part of the city centre.
The fall of Sirte, the home town of ousted dictator Muammar Gaddafi, would be a major setback for Isis, who have also lost territory in Syria and Iraq where they have declared an Islamic caliphate.
After capturing the airport last week and the seaport on Friday, troops loyal to the UN-backed unity government, mostly militias from Misrata in western Libya, were battling for control of the massive Ougadougou conference centre on Saturday. Artillery and mortar rounds have been hammering the building, with Isis snipers shooting back.
The Libyan forces also retook residential areas in the east of Sirte, which for the past year has been the main Isis base in the north African country, a spokesman for the forces, Rida Issa, told Agence France-Presse. Isis forces were now surrounded in a densely populated area of about two square miles inside the city where they were laying booby traps, he said. Most of the city’s residents have fled but about 30,000 remain, he added.
Units from Misrata have pushed Isis back more than 100 miles, last week entering Sirte itself, at a cost of 105 dead and more than 500 wounded.
Analysts have warned that the fall of Sirte would not mean the end of the jihadis in Libya, where they have fed on political and military divisions since the 2011 uprising that killed Gaddafi.
US and UK forces are providing logistics and intelligence support in the battle for the city, the hometown of former dictator Muammar Gaddafi, where the militant fighters have collapsed far more quickly than expected.
Related: Libyan forces claim to have ousted Isis from final stronghold
“The British and US experts are helping us with logistical and intelligence to deal with Daesh suicide bombers and tactical and strategic planning,” the Libyan army spokesman, Brigadier-General Mohammed al-Ghasri, told AP, using a common Arabic name for Isis.
A source from the Libyan forces’ operations room in Misrata said fighters from the frontline in the south of Sirte had looped round to the seafront to capture the port, which lies about 5km (three miles) east of the city centre.
Isis fighters were expected to put up a bitter fight for control after the group’s western Sabratha base was destroyed by militias and US airstrikes in February and local forces took over its base at Derna, in north-east Libya, last year.
The brigades have advanced more swiftly than many expected, though their progress has been hampered by suicide bombers, mines and snipers.
Just two months ago western experts warned that the group had expanded its control in Libya, had up to 6,000 fighters, and could even pose a threat to neighbouring countries.
There were heavy clashes on Friday around the town’s Ouagadougou conference centre, a sprawling Gaddafi-era complex that once hosted Arab and African summits and which now houses an Isis command centre. From early in the day, forces aligned with the UN-backed government of national accord (GNA) pounded Isis positions around the complex with heavy artillery fire. Warplanes of the GNA also carried out airstrikes around the centre and on other Isis positions inside Sirte, according to the Facebook page and Twitter account of the anti-jihadi operation.
However, the militants have crumbled so rapidly in the face of the latest offensive that both the west and Libya’s UN-backed unity government are questioning the former assessments of its strength. “The battle wasn’t as difficult as we thought it would be,” a government official said. “Maybe we exaggerated their numbers.”
An AFP correspondent at the scene reported heavy street-fighting about 2km (one mile) from the Ouagadougou centre. GNA forces used tanks, rocket launchers and artillery, the correspondent said, while the jihadis responded with machine guns, mortar rounds and sniper fire.
About two-thirds of Sirte’s 80,000 inhabitants are thought to have fled since Isis took control, but the city’s rapid collapse suggests that the group made little headway winning the confidence of those who remained.
“It was a war with planes and artillery, but now it is street fighting,” said one GNA combatant who declined to be named. “We are fighting between houses, on the streets, and we won’t back down before we eliminate them.”
Government troops managed to repel an Isis assault to take back the port, and say they are now bracing for street-to-street fighting over the final two square miles, through roads likely to be laced with mines and booby traps.
The GNA forces apparently pushed their way from the west into the city centre and AFP correspondents saw dozens of 4x4 vehicles deployed along the way.
“We are fighting between houses, on the streets, and we won’t back down before we eliminate them,” said one government soldier.
The GNA said in a tweet that two of its fighters had been killed and eight wounded and taken to a hospital in Misrata, further east. It also reported a failed attempt by Isis to attack them with a car bomb but gave no further details. An unspecified number of civilians who had been held by the jihadis had been freed, it said. “The countdown has begun,” the GNA said on Twitter.
It has been a grim advance so far. In the two years Isis has occupied Sirte, it has carved out a gruesome reputation. In February last year it carried out the ritual beheading of 21 Christians on the Sirte waterfront, then posted the film online. Troops have found the handcuffed bodies of murdered militants at barracks in the city, AP reported. They had been shot in the head and were possibly fighters who wanted to flee. Isis leaders are believed to have fled the city to regroup.
GNA forces are mostly made up of militias from western cities, notably Misrata, that have sided with the GNA, and the guards of oil installations that Isis has repeatedly tried to seize.
Even if the final battles are hard, Isis has lost almost all of the self-proclaimed caliphate that, until last month, stretched for 140 miles along the coast and deep into the Sirte basin oilfields.
A Libyan government official said the operation was being carried out “under the control of the GNA operations room … but obviously in close cooperation with Misrata … The battle wasn’t as difficult as we thought it would be … [Isis’s] force has dispersed. They [Misrata forces] have taken almost all the city now.”
“Libyans prove they know how to wage war,” tweeted the US envoy to Libya, Jonathan Winer, yesterday. “Hope they also wage peace and win that too.”
Isis has held Sirte since June 2015. Foreign intelligence services estimate it has 5,000 fighters in Libya but its strength inside Sirte and the number of civilians living in the city are unavailable.
Winer’s caution is well-placed. The coalition of forces attacking Sirte – Misrata from the east and a militia from the west – were last year fighting one another for control of Libya’s oil ports. Many fear that they will do so again. The parliament in Tobruk has refused to cooperate with the UN-backed government in Tripoli.
“The operation will not last much longer,” said a GNA forces spokesman, Mohamad Ghassri, on Thursday after its forces made it into Sirte’s city centre. “I think we’ll be able to announce the liberation of Sirte in two or three days,” he said.
Tobruk’s military commander, Khalifa Haftar, has held his own troops back from the battle for Sirte, with many Libyans now wondering whether the crushing of Isis will be the prelude to renewed hostilities between the forces of west and east Libya.
President Barack Obama’s special envoy to the international coalition battling Isis, Brett McGurk, tweeted on Thursday that GNA forces were making “rapid advances” against the jihadis.
GNA forces launched the Sirte offensive in mid-May and had seized towns, a power plant and army barracks before Thursday’s advance on the city centre. But analysts have warned that recapturing Sirte would not end Isis violence in Libya.
“What will happen to all the forces mobilised against [Isis]?” asked Mohamed Eljarh of the Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East. “And Haftar’s forces? There is a risk that they turn against each other,” he said.
General Khalifa Haftar, a controversial figure, is an opponent of the GNA who heads forces loyal to a rival government backed by the internationally recognised parliament now based in the country’s far east.
On the GNA’s Facebook page on Friday, the prime minister designate, Fayez al-Sarraj, called on “all military forces to unite in the face of our common enemy … and to join the victorious forces”.
But Ahmed al-Mesmari, a spokesman for Haftar’s forces, told AFP that “the groups that are fighting [Isis] in Sirte are illegitimate militias, loyal to an illegitimate government”.
Haftar’s forces have reportedly stopped in villages south of Sirte and not advanced on the city.
