The US has also launched strikes and raids against al-Qaida targets in the country since 2011, when North Atlantic Treaty Organisation conducted an air war against dictator Muammar Gaddafi.
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The U.S. administration’s tactics in Libya, two American officials said, were largely a product of the administration’s use of manned and unmanned aircraft against Islamic State, and meant to avoid committing “any meaningful level of ground support”.
“The first strikes started today in positions in Sirte, causing major casualties”, Serraj said in a televised statement.
A fighter of Libyan forces allied with the United Nations -backed government fires a shell with a Soviet-made T-55 tank at Islamic State fighters in Sirte, Libya, on August 2. The attacks help deny ISIL territory in Libya that could be used to attack the United States and its allies, he said.
Obama says the new operation is authorized now as a “30-day mission”, though there is no reason to expect that this is meant to serve as a timetable for it.
In Washington, the Pentagon said the raids were launched in response to a request from the Libyan government.
Libyan ground forces have been countering IS since the militant organisation advanced on the country in 2015. His warning comes after several French commandos were killed fighting DAESH militants.
The Obama administration has been negotiating for weeks with the Libyan government on how to use USA airstrikes to support the limited capability of Libyan warplanes to hit targets in Sirte. The U.S.is using a combination of manned and unmanned aircraft to conduct the airstrikes, Davis said. According to the reports, U.S. Air Force aircrafts struck ISIS targets in the area of the city of Sitre in the southern coast of the Gulf of Sidra.
U.S. Africa Command launched a second round of airstrikes Tuesday in a growing campaign against the Islamic State group in Libya, where American warplanes are providing air support to government forces conducting a ground offensive.
“The goal for the GNA is to eliminate ISIL from Sirte and from the country, and we’ll be working closely with them”.
Forces loyal to the GNA have been engaged with ISIL in Sirte since May; in mid-July the government claimed the compaign had made its greatest gains yet.
Pro-GNA forces said on August 2 they had gained full control of Al-Dollar, a central residential district in Sirte, after clashes that killed five of their members and wounded 17.
The GNA-led forces are making substantial progress in Sirte, unless there is a governance system IS, or other militias, will continue to exploit the administrative vacuum existing in Libya since 2011. Davis said that thanks to GNA-aligned fighters, IS control in Libya has essentially collapsed to the city center of Sirte.
Before the offensive, the US estimated that ISIS had thousands of fighters in Libya, a lot of them based in their Libyan stronghold.
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The airstrikes were in support of GNA-affiliated forces seeking to defeat ISIL in its primary stronghold in Libya, Cook said.
