10-16 May: ISIS fighters hijack fuel trucks

May 16, 2017 | ISIS

On 14 May, three fuel trucks were seized by ISIS fighters on the road from Abu Grien to Jufra, the same road where the ISIS attack on Misratan fighters took place on 7 May. The hijacking took place near the Great Man Made River crossing at Wadi Bey, south west of Sirte, close to where US airstrikes hit an ISIS camp in February.

Local sources say that leaders of the Government of National Accord (GNA) aligned Misratan al-Bunyan al-Marsus forces that fought against ISIS in Sirte received threats from ISIS social media and phone accounts. Messages accused them of being “infidels assisting imperialists” and that ISIS’s next operation would be called ‘Hadm al-Aswar fe Ard al-Mukhtar’, translated as ‘Breaking the Walls in the Land of [Omar] al-Mukhtar’. ISIS messages reportedly stated that ISIS sleeper cells were ‘awake’ in the mountainous desert regions and reminded them of ISIS’s latest feats in Mosul, as published in the ‘Saleel al-Sawarem 4’ video recently.

On 12 May, Noor al-Din al-Talhi, a Benghazi Revolutionaries Shura Council (BRSC) fighter and former member of Libya Shield 1 brigade, was reportedly killed in Souq al-Hout in Benghazi during a battle with the Libyan National Army (LNA). According to local sources, al-Talhi was the administrator for the pro-ISIS social media account ‘Al-Shaab Kollah Kan Fe Al-Jabha’ and has younger siblings also fighting with jihadists in Benghazi.