TAKING ON IS IN LIBYA

Mohammed Ghasri gives orders for the vehicle to stop. The military spokesman has seen his son and alights from the armoured jeep to kiss him on both cheeks. Just 2,500 metres away lies the Sirte Conference Centre, where IS in Libya has established its headquarters. There is an air of feverish tension, of uncertainty and fear. Here marks the end of civilisation. The violent rule of the world’s most feared terrorist organisation starts on the other side of a half-shot-away wall. The fighters — they can scarcely be described as the soldiers of a regular army — press themselves behind the wall, the North African summer sun burning down on them. Shots are heard, and there is the dull sound of mortars exploding in the worst fighting here in weeks.

“We’re going in now,” Ghasri’s son says fingering his camouflaged helmet as he takes his leave of his father.

“You’ve come too late. The battle against IS is over,” Ghasri had told the reporters a few days earlier, looking at the mover his glasses much like a strict teacher. The comment may be exaggerated but it is not entirely unjustified. Berlin, Paris, London and Washington all expressed concern a few weeks ago at the spread of IS in Libya, putting its numbers at more than 6,000 militants in control of a coastal strip stretching for 300 km.

Stopping the advance would be impossible without massive strikes from Western powers, observers said.

The main trading centre of Misrata could fall, followed by Tripoli just 190 km to the west, they warned. But then the Misrata militias mobilised. Today burnt out vehicles line the road eastwards from the city to Sirte, where until recently IS held sway.

The trucks were crammed with explosives that the militants detonated, causing heavy casualties among the fighters as they advanced to lay siege to Sirte. The IS extremists — considerably fewer than the estimates put out by Western military officials — were rapidly pushed back to the town. But the looming battle to take full control of the city, street by street, is likely to be bloody.

“We’re fighting people who want to die. That makes them inhuman,” says one of the militia leaders sitting at the back of a smoke-filled café, his dark eyes sunk deep in a troubled face.

Ismael Shukri, the head of military says the militants have come in from neighbouring countries. air intelligence in the region, Tunisia, Egypt and other