IS fighters head south in Libya

GROUPS of Islamic State (IS) fighters are quitting their bases in Libya fearing Western air strikes and heading south, posing a new threat to countries in Africa’s Sahel region including Niger and Chad, officials and intelligence sources said.

The ultra-hardline movement that has seized large areas of Syria and neighbouring Iraq has also amassed thousands of fighters along a coastal strip in Libya, where it has taken the city of Sirte and attacked oil infrastructure, according to Reuters.

African and Western governments fear that the vast, lawless Sahel band to the south will become its next target, and say any large regional presence could be used as a springboard for wider attacks.

“ISIS (Islamic State) are moving toward southern Libya to avoid the likely air strikes from the European coalition,” said Col. Mahamane Laminou Sani, director of documentation and military intelligence for Niger’s armed forces.

“If something like that happens, the whole Sahel is (affected),” he added on the sidelines of the annual U.S.-led ‘Flintlock’ counter-terrorism exercises in Senegal.

The arid region stretching from the Sahara Desert to the Sudanian Savanna, is already home to roving al Qaeda (AQIM) fighters who were scattered but not defeated by a 2012 French military intervention in Mali.