Libyan Unity Govt Captures Villages, Claims Imminent Victory Over ISIS

Oil Guard Presents Clashes 70 km Away as 'Fighting in Sirte'

The forces fighting for the Libyan “unity” government, essentially just the Petroleum Facilities Guard (PFG) who redeployed from oil terminals, have captured a pair of villages around 100 km east of the ISIS-held city of Sirte.

This follows chasing a small ISIS faction out of a crossroads even further to the east, and by all accounts to oil guards are about 70 km east of Sirte at this point. Apparently feeling this is close enough, the government has presented them as “fighting in Sirte” itself.

That they managed to move 40-50 km westward on the highway over the course of the past day is also apparently being used as a metric for how much they figure they’ll move in the days to come, which has led them to conclude they’ll capture Sirte any day now.

That may be easier said than done, as Sirte itself has some 1,800 ISIS fighters by recent estimates, and urban combat is likely to be a lot different than chasing a few fighters out of empty desert around a highway junction or seizing a couple of poorly defended villages.

Author: Jason Ditz

Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and the Detroit Free Press.