US Forces Target Terrorists in Libya Not Far From Algerian Border

The US military on Saturday eliminated two terrorist ring leaders during an air strike in Libya, announced the United States Command for Africa (Africom). Africom confirmed the information announced the day before the spokesman of the head of the Libyan government of national unity (GNA).
The air strike, occurred around noon in the district of Fursan, in the city of Ubari, in southwestern Libya and was carried out with the consent of the Government of Libya National Accord.
“At the moment, we are assessing if there were civilians killed during this air strike,” said Africom’s statement.
Oubari is about 700 kilometers from the Libyan capital Tripoli. It is however 400 kilometers as the crow flies and 700 kilometers by road from the Algerian city of Djanet, in the south-eastern wilaya or province of Illizi.
Since the beginning of Donald Trump’s presidency, the US military have twice raided positions of the terrorist organization “Daesh” in Libya than it has publicly declared, the New York Times reported recently.
Eight US airstrikes have targeted terrorist positions in Libya since January 2017, but only four have been publicly announced.
This number of US strikes in Libya remains relatively low compared to strikes in other countries where the United States intervenes. In the same period, the US military carried out more than 130 air strikes in Yemen and more than 40 strikes in Somalia.
In Libya, the US airstrikes are usually carried out by armed MQ-9 Reaper type drones taking off from an air base in southern Sicily, Italy.
In this line, Algeria is considered to be one of the most reluctant countries to foreign military bases in countries with which it has borders, in the opinion of observers. This is reflected in the informal criticism by the political and media circles of the eastern neighbor of Tunisia because of the alleged hosting by this Maghrebian country of a NATO military base.