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Militias fighting with Islamist groups in Libya’s eastern city of Benghazi have captured up to 25 soldiers and killed five others, according to an army commander in the city.
Special forces commander Fadhil al-Hasi told Reuters that fighters from Majlis al-Shura, a Misrata-linked militia coalition including the powerful Ansar al-Sharia, had attacked an army checkpoint, killing five.
Jamaat-ul-Ahrar TTP, the new splinter group of the Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan (Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP), released a graphic as well as a statement celebrating al-Qaeda’s attack on the US on Sept. 11, 2001. The image and statement were emailed by Ihsanullah Ihsan, the group’s spokesman, to The Long War Journal. The image is reproduced above, and the statement, titled #Happy911, is here.
Sixty-five suspected militants were killed in aerial strikes by fighter jets in the North Waziristan tribal region, the military said on Wednesday. The claims, however, could not be independently verified as journalists have limited access to the restive tribal agency.
A statement from the Inter-Services Public Relations said, “Three terrorist hideouts were destroyed in precision strikes in the northwest of Dattakhel early on Wednesday killing 35 terrorists.”
An explosion killed the leader of one of Syria’s most powerful Islamist insurgent groups Ahrar al-Sham, the group said, and an organisation that monitors violence in the civil war said at least 28 of its senior commanders had died.
Ahrar al-Sham is a hardline Islamist group and part of the Islamic Front alliance that has been in armed conflict with the Islamic State group which has seized swathes of territory in Syria and Iraq. It was at one point considered the strongest insurgent group in the Syrian civil war.
At least 10 islamist militants have been killed by army in North Waziristan tribal district today, in north-west Pakistan, where since middle June is in underway a military offensive against rebels.