U.S. warplanes on Friday struck an ISIS camp in Libya where a senior operative in the terrorist group — Noureddine Chouchane — was believed to be, a U.S. official told CNN.
Chouchane is believed to have played an instrumental role in two deadly terror attacks in Tunisia last year, one at Tunis’ Bardo Museum that killed 23 people and another at a seaside resort in Sousse that left 38 dead. ISIS claimed responsibility for both massacres.
Friday’s airstrike targeted Chouchane and the ISIS camp generally, according to the U.S. official.
It was not immediately clear how many people — and if any, who — were killed.
The U.S. military has launched scores of airstrikes against ISIS targets over the past many months. These have been concentrated in Iraq and Syria, where the Islamist extremist group has established its biggest foothold and has its de facto capital in Raqqa.
But Libya — a North African nation that’s been in turmoil, and a hotbed for some militant groups, since a 2011 revolution that toppled its longtime dictator Moammar Gadhafi — has been in its crosshairs as well.
This includes an airstrike last November that killed Abu Nabil, an Iraqi national and longtime al Qaeda operative who’d become a top ISIS leader, according to the Pentagon.