On 15 February, Vladimir Voronkov, Under-Secretary-General at the UN Office of CounterTerrorism, alongside other senior counter-terrorism experts, informed the UN Security Council about the ‘Eighteenth report of the Secretary-General on the threat posed by ISIL (Da’esh) to international peace and security and the range of United Nations efforts in support of Member States in countering the threat’ which is based on the thirty-third report of the Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team.
Regarding Libya, the reports stress that the ‘Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant – Libya’ (ISIL-Libya) continues to operate in cities and remote areas of Fezzan, including Murzuq, Qatrun, Umm al-Aranib, Ghudwa, Sebha, Haruj al-Aswad, Kalanga Mountains, and the Libya-Niger border area. In the last two areas, some Tebu provide protection to the ISIL-Libya fighters.
The report notes that most of the 150 to 400 active ISIL-Libya fighters are either Libyans, including Tebu, or foreign fighters from Chad, Nigeria, and Sudan, adding they have not conducted any terrorist attacks recently. The reports said that during the last six months, the ‘Libyan Intelligence Service’ has dismantled two ISIL-Libya cells that were involved in the transportation of individuals from Sudan and Chad towards Libya and further on to other destinations.