Stankovic and Stepic were abducted in the northwestern coastal city of Sabratha on November 8, 2015, when their auto was hijacked by gunmen after becoming separated from a convoy carrying Serbia’s ambassador to Libya.
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American warplanes hit an ISIS camp Friday in Libya where foreign fighters had been engaged in special, advanced training – possibly, a US official said, ahead of a terror attack in Europe or somewhere else outside the North African nation.
Forty-one people were killed and six were wounded when US jets targeted an ISIS camp overnight in Libya, NBC News reports.
“Unfortunately as a outcome of this attack on the Islamic State (IS) in Libya, the two of them lost their lives”, Ivica Dacic told reporters, referring to Friday’s air strike.
Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook noted that Chouchane’s death would be a significant blow to IS in Libya, adding he had been planning attacks against United States and other Western interests.
Locals officials said 43 people were killed. “This was outside the normal training camp scenario”, the official said.
“This was an instance where we saw an opportunity to strike at ISIL in Libya and we carried out that strike and we feel confident this was a successful strike”, Cook said.
The Sabratha raid marked the second USA attack against an Islamic State militant in Libya.
Chouchane enabled the movement of potential Daesh-affiliated foreign fighters from Tunisia to Libya and other locations, according to the Pentagon.
Col. Mark Cheadle, a spokesman for the Pentagon’s Africa Command, identified the operative as Noureddine Chouchane, who has been connected to Tunisia’s beach massacre and the Bardo Museum attack. The strike was first reported by The New York Times.
Mr Davic said a protest note would be sent to Washington for failing to inform the Serbian authorities before the raid. That training happened near Sabratha, about 60 miles (100 kilometers) east of the Tunisian border where the Friday morning strike took place.
“With respect to Libya, I have been clear from the outset that we will go after ISIS wherever it appears, the same way that we went after al-Qaeda wherever they appeared”, President Obama said this month.
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Since Gaddafi was overthrown five years ago, Libya has slipped deeper into chaos with two rival governments each backed by competing factions of former rebel brigades. Kobler considers that any air campaign might hinder the process of forming a new unity government in Libya, which holds the capacity of fulfilling its duties.
