U.S. commander in Africa says IS doubles presence in Libya

Commander of U.S. Africa Command said on Thursday the Islamic State (IS) had doubled its presence inside Libya in the past 12 to 18 months.

"In Libya, the U.S. intelligence community has said it's around 4 (thousand) to 6,000. It is probably about doubled in the last 12 to 18 months based on what their assessments were last year," said Army Gen. David Rodriguez here at a Pentagon briefing.

Though the IS' stronghold in Libya was in Sirte, a city on Libya's Mediterranean coast, the extremist group also had a presence in the east in Benghazi and Darna, as well as in Sabratha in the west, said Rodriguez.

Apart from recruits from within north Africa and from Iraq and Syria, some militants already inside Libya had also pledged allegiance to IS, he added.

Despite the expansion of IS' influence in Libya, the U.S. military had so far publicly admitted to have conducted only two airstrikes against IS targets inside Libya, compared to its daily air raids against the group in Syria and Iraq, according to examinations of the Pentagon's previous statements.

Pentagon's first ever target-killing of IS operatives happened last November. The target was Abu Nabil, also known as Wissam Najm Abd Zayd al Zubaydi, an Iraqi national who was a longtime al-Qaida operative and the senior IS leader in Libya.

The Pentagon carried out its second airstrike in Libya in February, killing about 40 IS recruits in a training camp near Sabratha.

Asked by reporters about the reason for so far limited airstrikes inside Libya, Rodriguez said the Pentagon had only planed to target IS fighters in Libya who were posing "imminent threat."

"(What) We're going after, and continue to go after, is the ones that have imminent threat to U.S. personnel and facilities. Not the intent to do that, (but) the ones that do that," said Rodriguez. Endit