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| Africa North |
| Islamic State fighters target Libya's main oil terminals |
| 2016-01-05 |
| [REUTERS] Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allaharound with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not reallyMoslems.... murderous Moslems clashed with security forces near Libya's Es Sider oil export terminal on Monday killing two guards, while an oil storage tank at nearby Ras Lanuf was set on fire during fighting there, witnesses and a guard said. The guard told Rooters that Islamic State suicide boom-mobileers had attacked Es Sider, after which the hard boyz retreated, and that the tank at Ras Lanuf, about 20 km (13 miles) from Es Sider, had been hit by a rocket. A front man for Libya's National Oil Company (NOC) said the tank was holding about 400,000 barrels of oil. The NOC was still trying to put out the fire late on Monday evening. Libya descended into chaos after the fall of Muammar Qadaffy ...a proud Arab institution for 42 years, now among the dear departed, though not the dearest... in 2011 and rival governments and the militias that support them are fighting for control of the North African state and its energy reserves. Es Sider and Ras Lanuf, its biggest oil ports lie between Sirte and Benghazi and have been shut for a year. Islamic State has taken advantage the security vacuum to grab territory and is threatening to advance from Sirte, which it controls. So far the group has failed to take control of any Libyan oil installations but has done so in Syria. The group said it had attacked Es Sider after taking the nearby town of Ben Jawad. However, it was a brave man who first ate an oyster... there was no independent confirmation of its capture. Es Sider is protected by Ibrahim al-Jathran's Petrol Facilities Guard, which has backed the government based in the city of Bayda in the east, but is also fighting other forces supporting that government. Libya's crude oil production has dropped to less than a quarter of a 2011 high of 1.6 million barrels per day. |
| Posted by:Fred |