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Isis attacks Sidra in new bid for oil facilities control
ISLAMIC STATE (Isis) guerillas attacked oil facilities in the port of Sidra yesterday, detonating two car bombs and battling Western-backed government forces.
Ali al-Hassi, a spokesman for the Petrol Facilities Guard that controls Sidra and the majority of Libya’s oil fields, says six of their gunmen were killed in the attacks, along with five Isis militants.
A storage tank containing 420,000 barrels of oil was hit by a rocket, igniting a huge blaze.
Isis claimed to have taken control of Bin Jawad, 19 miles west of Sidra on the road to Sirte, the stronghold of the Nato-installed regime that controls the east of the country.
In an online statement the group said the operation was named in honour of Abu Mughira al-Qahtani, one of its leaders killed two months ago in a US air raid on the eastern city of Darna.
France warned in December that Isis was planning to take control of Libya’s oil fields, as they have done in Iraq and Syria.
An attack by the Wahhabi group on Sidra in October failed to capture the port.
Libya fell into chaos and internecine war following the Nato-backed overthrow of Muammar Gadaffi’s government in 2011.
In December the various factions that have divided the country since then signed a UN-brokered agreement to form a unity government — a deal that has yet to be implemented.
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