Fighters for the Islamic State militant group have been training in remote areas of Libya, heightening concern about a country that has been all but left by the wayside in terms of international politics since its 2011 revolution.

Training camps with several hundred Islamic State fighters have been spotted in parts of eastern Libya, and some US intelligence reports suggest a new presence for the militant group near Tripoli, in the country's west, US officials disclosed in recent days.

Although the officials say no immediate military response is planned, the appearance of the camps is giving new impetus to a debate about whether the United States eventually will need to expand its campaign against the militants beyond Iraq and Syria.

Islamic State "is exploiting vast, ungoverned spaces in Libya," US Senator Marco Rubio said this week during a Senate hearing aimed at coming up with a new legal authorization for US military involvement in the Middle East.

The militants appear to have multiple training camps in eastern Libya, officials said. The groups in Libya apparently don't include higher-ranking Islamic State fighters preparing terrorist operations, officials said.

US Army General David Rodriguez, chief of Africa Command, said at a recent Pentagon briefing that the operations seemed "very small and nascent. ... We're watching it very carefully to see how it develops."

Retired US Marine General John Allen, special envoy for the US effort against Islamic State, said Thursday that US officials were still trying to determine whether the fighters they have detected are Libyan Islamists who are seeking to affiliate themselves with Islamic State, or people who have arrived from the organization's centre in Iraq and Syria.

Representative Mike Rogers, the outgoing chairman of the US House Intelligence Committee, told reporters on Friday that of 21 al-Qaida affiliates around the world, half have offered support to Islamic State.

Fighters in Libya who have sworn allegiance to the group are in control of a portion of the eastern coastal city of Derna. They are patrolling the area to try to enforce Islamic morality and have set up Islamic courts and raised the group's black flag.

Frederic Wehrey, a long-time Libya analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, predicted that the United States will follow a policy of "overwatch and containment," and not intervene unless officials believe the threat has grown more urgent.

There are several reasons not to get involved, he said. The United States could complicate the United Nations-led effort to broker a peace deal if Americans appeared to take sides in Libya's civil war, he said.

And there is the risk of another entanglement in a messy open-ended conflict.

The apparent creation of a new terrorist base "pushes all the buttons in Washington, but we have to make sure they're not pushed in a way where we get entangled," he said.

Some analysts warn that, unlike the United States, European countries can't wait to act on Libya because the chaos there threatens the Mediterranean region with flows of refugees, arms and drugs, as well as Islamist militants.

Simple containment "could be enough to achieve the American strategic objectives, but it would not solve the problems for Europe," said Wolfgang Pusztai, a long-time Libya analyst who is based in Vienna.

Militias battle in central Libya near oil terminal

Libyan officials said yesterday that Islamist-allied militias from the western city of Mirada clashed have fought with an eastern militia that holds a major oil terminal in violence that killed at least two people.

The officials say Tripoli-based government - backed by Misrata militias and Islamist factions - ordered its forces to "liberate" the Sidra oil terminal. That terminal is held by the militia of eastern separatist Ibrahim Jedran. Jedran's forces are known to be loyal to Libya's elected government based in the eastern city of Tobruk.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to journalists.

Yesterday's fighting is the first confrontation near Libya's vital oil terminals. It highlights stakes of the ongoing chaos in Libya, where rival governments, parliaments and militias fight for power.

 

Many nearby states risk being destabilised - UN

A United Nations special envoy is warning of Islamic State group camps in Libya and says many nearby states risk being destabilised if the country's chaos isn't quickly brought under control.

Hiroute Guebre Sellassie briefed the UN Security Council on Thursday on the threats to the Sahel region in western Africa, a week after a senior US general announced that the Islamic State group had set up training camps in eastern Libya.

Army Gen. David Rodriguez, who heads US Africa Command, has said perhaps a couple of hundred fighters are in the camps, but details are sketchy.

Sellassie, the UN envoy to the Sahel region, had no details on the camps but urged the international community to do more to stabilize Libya, which has split into two governments.