“The first air strikes were carried out at specific locations in Sirte today causing severe losses to enemy ranks”, he said.
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Just months before leaving office, the new intervention in Libya marks the latest front Obama has started in the Middle East as USA forces continue airstrikes in Syria and Iraq, while more ground troops have been sent to Iraq and special forces are fighting alongside the Kurdish-Arab coalition in northern Syria known as Syria Democratic Forces.
It appears to mark the start of a more intense U.S. role in the region.
While the Pentagon had carried out two previous air attacks on high-value IS targets in Libya, Monday’s action marked the first US strikes in Sirte itself, and the first salvos in what the Pentagon hopes will be a quick campaign.
Libya is now the fourth country in which the USA military is launching airstrikes against Islamic State militants, including Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria.
The latest airstrikes are not the first time the US has targeted ISIS in Libya – US warplanes attacked an ISIS training camp in Sabratha in February and a senior ISIS figure in November – but that did not herald a sustained operation.
The numbers were believed to have fallen in recent months as Isil came under pressure from the government-aligned forces and militias.
Military officials estimate there are fewer than 1,000 ISIS fighters in Sirte, down from several thousand earlier this year.
“We have seen those forces work very effectively to collapse ISIL’s control down to a very small area, which really comprises the city center of Sirte”, Davis said.
Cook told reporters on Monday that the legal justification for the strikes stemmed from a 2001 authorization for military force passed in the immediate wake of the 9/11 attacks and cited by Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama as the legal framework for military actions in countries like Yemen, Somalia, Syria, Libya, Pakistan, and others. The deal calls for a transitional period of up to two years, followed by a vote on a draft constitution and then presidential or parliamentary elections.
On Tuesday, two US airstrikes targeted an ISIS rocket launcher and an excavator vehicle.
But, the number of IS fighters in Libya has dwindled from as many as 6,000 to now just some hundreds, weakened by an offensive launched in May by local militias, including many under the control of the United Nations -brokered government.
The strikes, which USA officials have forecast for months, are meant to help break an impasse between Libyan militias that have cornered ISIS fighters in a grinding urban battle in Sirte’s downtown.
The Islamic State has established a presence in war-torn Libya and in Afghanistan.
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Information for this article was contributed by Lolita C. Baldor, Maggie Michael, Josh Lederman and Robert Burns of The Associated Press and by Missy Ryan, Sudarsan Raghavan and Thomas Gibbons-Neff of The Washington Post.
