Three French troops in intelligence operation
IS fighters face possible defeat in Libya
PARIS, July 20, (Agencies): Three French soldiers who were carrying out “dangerous intelligence operations” in Libya have been killed in a helicopter accident, President Francois Hollande said Wednesday.
The deaths provide the first confirmation that France has troops in the country where the Islamic State group has several bases.
Hollande said Libya was experiencing “dangerous instability.
“It’s only a few hundred kilometres from Europe’s shores. And at the moment we’re carrying out dangerous intelligence operations,” he said.
“Three of our soldiers who were, in fact, involved in these operations have lost their lives in a helicopter accident.”
Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian had earlier confirmed the deaths of three officers “who died while on mission in Libya” and praised their “courage and devotion”, without giving details on the circumstances of their deaths.
France had previously said its warplanes were carrying out reconnaissance flights over Libya.
But Paris has never confirmed reports that it has special forces on the ground in the country, as claimed by Le Monde daily and hinted at previously by the UN’s envoy to Libya, Martin Kobler.
Rival militias in the desert state have been vying for power since the overthrow of veteran dictator Muammar
“terror group” and has stepped up pressure on Washington to extradite him, sending several “dossiers” it says are packed with evidence about his alleged involvement.
Gulen issued a statement Tuesday urging Washington to reject the extradition call and dismissed as “ridiculous” the claim he was behind the botched coup.
The 75-year-old reclusive cleric lives in Pennsylvania but retains vast interests in Turkey ranging from media to finance to schools and wields influence in various arms of the state, including the judiciary and police.
In their first telephone conversation since the attempted overthrow, President Barack Obama pledged US assistance to Erdogan for the investigation into the putsch, which has threatened to once again raise tensions between the uneasy NATO allies.
Rubble
MPs have meanwhile carried on working in parliament, despite rubble and shards of glass still covering the floor after three air strikes on the night of the coup.
Ankara’s police headquarters is in an even worse state, with the 10-storey building gutted by repeated air attacks and the air still thick with dust from the rubble.
“I do not know how long the rebuilding will take. But we have started,” a senior police official told AFP at the scene.
The government says 312 people were killed in the coup, including 145 civilians, 60 police, three soldiers and 104 plotters.
Before the plot erupted, the government had been waging a relentless military campaign against Kurdish rebels in the southeast of the country and their rear bases in northern Iraq.
The Turkish air force launched its first strikes since the abortive putsch against targets of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in northern Iraq, in a sign Erdogan has regained full control over the armed forces.
Fighter jets late Tuesday hit PKK targets in the Hakurk region, said the staterun Anadolu news agency, quoting security sources. It claimed 20 fighters were killed.
Academics
Turkey’s higher education council has banned academics from work trips abroad and urged those overseas to quickly return home, the state-run Anadolu news agency reported on Wednesday.
Turkey has widened its massive postcoup purge from the military and police to the education sector to root out supporters of US-based cleric Fethullah Gulen, whom it accuses of orchestrating the attempted putsch.
The council asked university rectors to “urgently examine the situation of all academic and administrative personnel linked with FETO” — or the “Fethullah Terrorist Organisation”, as it labels Guthe Gaddafi in 2011.
The Islamic State group has taken advantage of the breakdown in central authority to establish a stronghold in the coastal city of Sirte.
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon says Islamic State fighters in Libya are facing the “distinct possibility” of defeat in their last stronghold and are likely to scatter elsewhere in the North African country and the region.
The UN chief said in a new report to the UN Security Council that member states’ estimates of the number of IS fighters range between 2,000 and 7,000 from Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Egypt, Mali, Morocco and Mauritania.
Ban said one member state recently reported between 3,000 and 4,000 IS fighters in Sirte, the extremist group’s last bastion along Libya’s northern coast which he called “the most active war front” in the country.
But he said as a result of the recent offensive against IS, by forces aligned with the UN-brokered government and others, “the current number of those in Sirte is now likely well under 1,000,” with large numbers of those who have recently fled the city likely relocating and regrouping “in smaller and geographically dispersed cells throughout Libya and in neighboring countries.”
According to one unnamed UN member state, Ban said dozens of Tunisians fighting for IS have already returned home “with the intent to conduct attacks.”
len’s supporters — and report back by Aug 5.
It also told universities that academics who are already abroad on work or study missions should return home “within the shortest possible time”.
On Tuesday, the government suspended 15,200 state education employees and demanded the resignation of almost 1,600 deans from private and state universities over alleged links to Gulen.
Gulen lives in Pennsylvania but retains vast interests in Turkey ranging from media to finance to schools and wields influence in various apparatus including the judiciary and police.
Three years ago, critics of Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdogan rallied against him in mass protests. Last Friday they were appalled by a coup attempt against him. Now they fear what may come next.
A gloomy mood pervades Istanbul’s chic, secular neighbourhood of Besiktas, a left-wing stronghold and centre of opposition against Erdogan.