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Libya's LNA Launches Operation Near Southern Border after Chad Clashes

Libyan National Army (LNA) spokesman Ahmed al-Mismari. (AFP file photo)
Libyan National Army (LNA) spokesman Ahmed al-Mismari. (AFP file photo)
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Libya's LNA Launches Operation Near Southern Border after Chad Clashes

Libyan National Army (LNA) spokesman Ahmed al-Mismari. (AFP file photo)
Libyan National Army (LNA) spokesman Ahmed al-Mismari. (AFP file photo)

Khalifa Haftar's Libyan National Army (LNA) has launched a military operation to secure the southern border, it said on Friday, after fighting near the area resumed between the government of Chad and a rebel group trying to unseat it.

Chad's President Mahamat Idriss Deby said on Sunday that the army was again fighting the Libya-based Chadian Front for Change and Concord (FACT) group, which quit a ceasefire last week amid clashes.

LNA spokesperson Ahmed al-Mismari said the operation would involve land and air forces. An LNA media unit distributed photographs of Haftar's son, Saddam Haftar, overseeing the operation with other LNA officers.

The media unit said the LNA had expelled members of the Chadian opposition and their families from a residential area they were using in a desert town 300km (200 miles) north of the border with Chad.

Libya has had little internal peace or security since the 2011 NATO-backed uprising against Moammar al-Gaddafi, and its southern desert border has become a major transit route for trafficking networks.

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Remains of 30 People Believed Killed by ISIS Found in Syria in a Search by Qatar and FBI 

Journalist James Foley responds to questions during an interview with The Associated Press, in Boston, May 27, 2011. (AP)
Journalist James Foley responds to questions during an interview with The Associated Press, in Boston, May 27, 2011. (AP)
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Remains of 30 People Believed Killed by ISIS Found in Syria in a Search by Qatar and FBI 

Journalist James Foley responds to questions during an interview with The Associated Press, in Boston, May 27, 2011. (AP)
Journalist James Foley responds to questions during an interview with The Associated Press, in Boston, May 27, 2011. (AP)

The remains of 30 people believed to have been killed by the ISIS group have been found in a remote Syrian town in a search led by Qatari search teams and the FBI, according to a statement from Qatar on Monday.

The Qatari internal security forces said the FBI had requested the search, and that DNA tests are currently underway to determine the identities of the people. The Qatari agency did not whom the American intelligence and security agency is trying to find.

Dozens of foreigners, including aid workers and journalists, were killed by ISIS militants who had controlled large swaths of Syria and Iraq for half a decade. The extremist group lost most of its territory in late 2017 and was declared defeated in 2019.

Since then, dozens of gravesites and mass graves have been discovered in northern Syria containing remains and bodies of people ISIS had abducted over the years.

American journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff, as well as humanitarian workers Kayla Mueller and Peter Kassig are among those killed by ISIS.

John Cantlie, a British correspondent, was abducted alongside Foley in 2012, and was last seen alive in one of the extremist group's propaganda videos in 2016.

The search took place in the town of Dabiq, near Syria's northern border with Türkiye.

Mass graves have also found in areas previously controlled by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad who was ousted in a lightning insurgency last December, ending his family's half-century rule. For years, the Assads used their notorious security and intelligence agencies to crack down on dissidents, many who have gone missing.

The United Nations in 2021 estimated that over 130,000 Syrians were taken away and disappeared during the peaceful uprising that began in 2011 and descended into a 13-year civil war.