U.S. warplanes on Friday struck an ISIS hub in Libya where Noureddine Chouchane, a senior operative in the terrorist group, was believed to be, a U.S. official told CNN.
Chouchane is believed to have played an instrumental role in two 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.
The U.S. strike Friday on two houses in al-Qasser district in Sabratha — a coastal city in northwestern Libya where most residents are Tunisian citizens — killed at least 10 people and wounded 12 others, two Libyan security officials in the city told CNN.
It was not immediately clear if Chouchane was among those killed or wounded.
Growing intelligence suggested the targeted site was being used for advanced firearms and other training for foreign fighters intent on launching attacks outside Libya, a second U.S. official said.
“This was outside the normal training camp scenario,” the official added.
The U.S. military has launched scores of airstrikes against ISIS targets over the past 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.
ISIS expansion in turbulent Libya
A report late last year to the United Nations Security Council noted the terror group’s growing, significant presence in Libya and warned it could grow even more through local alliances.
ISIS has emerged as the world’s top terror threat, having conducted or inspired about 70 attacks in 20 countries since declaring its caliphate in June 2014. Not including its armed campaigns in Syria and Iraq, these attacks have killed at least 1,200 people and injured more than 1,700 others.
It is significant that ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi exerts more control over the ISIS branch in Libya than any other, according to the U.N. report. This conclusion is in line with U.S. intelligence determinations that al-Baghdadi sees the relatively lawless, impoverished North African state as prime ground to enlarge his caliphate.
As such, ISIS has found a home in many places in Gadhafi’s hometown of Sirte. From there, it’s asserted itself by taking territory and sadistically exercising terror, as evidenced by its beheadings of Egyptian Coptic Christians about a year ago on a Libyan beach.
Libya has also been a base to train militants, devise plots and launch them in places like neighboring Tunisia, which has been considered the Arab Spring’s success story but has not been immune to the violence wrenching the regions.
The Bardo Museum and Sousse beach attacks have been gut-wrenching proof of that, not just for the human carnage but also for the effect on a Tunisian economy that’s long benefited from tourism.
U.S. official called for ‘decisive military action’ in Libya
It’s no surprise that the United States would help Tunisia. Last May, President Barack Obama designated the country as “a major non-NATO ally,” cementing America’s strong ties.
“I emphasized to the (Tunisian) President that the United States is fully committed to working with Tunisia so that it can continue to build on (its past) success,” Obama said in Washington alongside his Tunisian counterpart, Beji Caid Essebsi.
Chouchane has been a focus for Tunisia since its Interior Ministry identified him and several others as planners of the Bardo Museum attack.
The 30-something man hails from the central Tunisian town of Chouachnia in the Sidi Bouzid governorate, an area that’s a breeding ground for many jihadists.
Yet Friday’s airstrike isn’t just about Tunisia and Chouchane. It’s also about the larger fight against terrorists, particularly in Libya.
A U.S. airstrike in Libya last November killed Abu Nabil, an Iraqi national and longtime al Qaeda operative who’d become an ISIS leader, the Pentagon said.
Less than a month later, the American military killed Abdirahman Sandhere, a senior leader of the al Qaeda-affiliated group Al-Shabaab, according to another Pentagon spokesman statement.
And a few weeks ago, Obama’s top military adviser talked about stepping up efforts to curtail ISIS specifically in the North African country.
Talking to reporters while traveling in Europe, Gen. Joseph Dunford, the Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, said the United States wants to “take decisive military action” to “check” ISIS in Libya.