United States raid in the skies of Libya. The US Air Force bombed an ISIS training camp near the coastal city of Sabratha, 70 kilometers west of Tripoli and about 100 kilometers from the border with Tunisia. The New York Times wrote it, quoting a Western official according to whom more than 30 people were killed, almost all of Tunisian nationality. Local authorities reported 41 dead and six injured, specifying that none of the victims is of Libyan nationality.
A US official told France Press the raids were carried out last night, saying a "high-value" target was also hit. It would be Noureddine Chouchane, a 35-year-old Tunisian jihadist and alleged mastermind of the two attacks carried out last year in Tunisia: that of March 2015 at the Bardo museum in Tunis, which cost the lives of 22 people, including four Italians, and that of June 2015, carried out in the tourist resort of Sousse, in which 38 people died.
According to the reconstruction of the New York Times, the building was hit by F-15E fighters after weeks in which US special forces monitored the site through reconnaissance drones, satellite imagery and other monitoring equipment, noting that Chouchane had gathered dozens of recruits from Tunisia and other countries in the region in what appeared to be a training program aimed at hitting one or more targets. “The number of foreign fighters involved in this type of training under Chouchane's leadership led us to believe that they were preparing for a major attack outside Libya, in the region or perhaps in Europe,” a Western source told the American newspaper. .
In recent months, the alarm had been sounded for the presence of ISIS at the gates of Sabratha, with the Libyan media reporting on militia training camps, from which the terrorists responsible for the attacks in Tunisia would have departed. Last December, Isis therefore raided the city to obtain the release of three of its militiamen. On that occasion, archaeologists had launched an appeal to safeguard the nearby archaeological site, declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site for its Roman-era treasures.
