(CNN) — U.S. warplanes on Friday struck an ISIS camp in Libya where Noureddine Chouchane, a senior operative in the terrorist group, was believed to be, a U.S. official told CNN.
Chouchane is believed to have played an instrumental role in two terror attacks in Tunisia last year, one at Tunis’ Bardo Museum that killed 23 people and another at a seaside resort in Sousse that left 38 dead. ISIS claimed responsibility for both massacres.
The U.S. strike on two houses in al-Qasser district in Sabratha — a coastal city in northwestern Libya where most residents are Tunisian citizens — killed at least 10 people and wounded 12 others, two Libyan security officials in the city told CNN.
It was not immediately clear if Chouchane was among those killed or wounded.
The U.S. military has launched scores of airstrikes against ISIS targets over the past months. These have been concentrated in Iraq and Syria, where the Islamist extremist group has established its biggest foothold and has its de facto capital in Raqqa.
But Libya — a North African nation that’s been in turmoil, and a hotbed for some militant groups, since a 2011 revolution that toppled its longtime dictator Moammar Gadhafi — has been in its crosshairs as well.
This includes an airstrike last November that killed Abu Nabil, an Iraqi national and longtime al Qaeda operative who’d become a top ISIS leader, according to the Pentagon.
ISIS expansion in turbulent Libya
Airstrikes like the ones targeting Nabil and now Chouchane come as the United States and its allies have been pressed to do something to thwart ISIS’ expansion in Libya.
A report late last year to the United Nations Security Council noted the terror group’s growing, significant presence in Libya and warned it could grow even more through local alliances.
ISIS has emerged as the world’s top terror threat, having conducted or inspired about 70 attacks in 20 countries since declaring its caliphate in June 2014. Not including its armed campaigns in Syria and Iraq, these attacks have killed at least 1,200 people and injured more than 1,700 others.
Still, it is significant that ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi exerts more control over the ISIS branch in Libya than any other, according to the U.N. report. This conclusion is in line with U.S. intelligence estimates, the view being that al-Baghdadi seeing the relatively lawless, impoverished North African state as prime ground to enlarge his caliphate.
As such, ISIS has found a home in many places in Gadhafi’s hometown of Sirte. From there, it’s asserted itself by taking territory and sadistically exercising terror, as evidenced by its beheadings of Egyptian Coptic Christians about a year ago on a Libyan beach.
Libya has also been a base to train militants, devise plots and launch them in places like neighboring Tunisia, which has been considered the Arab Spring’s success story but has not been immune to the violence wrenching the regions.
The Bardo Museum and Sousse beach attacks have been gut-wrenching proof of that, not just for the human carnage but also for the effect on a Tunisian economy that’s long benefited from tourism.
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