U.S. military kills 2 al-Qaeda members in Libya drone strike

A U.S. drone strike in Libya over the weekend killed two members of the terrorist organisation al-Qaeda, the U.S. military said on Wednesday.

The attack took place on March 24 in the town of Ubari, said the U.S. military’s Africa Command in Stuttgart, Germany.

One of the dead is Musa Abu-Dawud, a high-ranking member of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) group.

The group has been responsible for numerous attacks in the region. It is based in Algeria but has tried to destabilise other countries, including Libya.

It was the first time the U.S. military had attacked AQIM in Libya, an Africa Command spokesman said.

U.S. military forces have been targeting Islamic State fighters in the deeply split country’s civil war for the past two years.

The terrorist organisation managed to establish a small foothold in Libya in 2015 – the first outside its core territories in Iraq and Syria.

But since December 2016, when Libyan militias took back the city of Sirte, Islamic State has controlled no territory in Libya.

Concern that the group could take advantage of the chaos in the country and rise up again still lingers.