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U.S. Africa Command says that at least two MiG-29 Fulcrum fighter jets, possibly piloted by shadowy Russian mercenaries, have crashed in Libya. Jared Szuba, the Pentagon correspondent for AI-Monitor, Tweeted out that one of the jets was apparently lost on June 28, while the other went down on September 7, 2020. This information had come in a statement from Rear Admiral Heidi Berg, U.S. Africa Command's (AFRICOM) director of intelligence. Another tweet indicates that Berg believes that "Russian fighter aircraft," presumably MiG-29s too, but potentially also Su-24 Fencer strike aircraft, have conducted airstrikes in Libya. AI-Monitor's Szuba follows that up...

Sirte, 450 km (280 miles) east of Tripoli, became Islamic State's largest outpost beyond its Iraq and Syria territory. It was taken last year by militants who profited from Libya's war among rival factions to gain control of territory and impose their hardline vision on the city. Losing Sirte would be a major setback for the group and a big blow to morale as it also struggles to hold ground in Iraq, where it has lost the city of Falluja and other territory to forces backed by U.S.-led air strikes. Islamic State are being squeezed by a tightening ring of...

Rut Roh – A “Refugee Relief Supply” cargo container arrives In Greece devoid of “Refugee Relief Supplies”… Watch the video to see what the “aid for Syrian refugees” was: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xn-UCR5p0y0#t=10

The iman of one of Misrata’s mosques, Sheikh Fakhri Husein Jahani, was murdered on Tuesday. He was killed when unknown assailants threw a grenade at him as he was leaving the Omar Ibn Khatab Mosque after Maghreb (Sunset) prayers. Five other people were wounded in the attack, three of them seriously. One of the wounded, a child, lost an eye in the blast. Three people have been arrested in connection with the killing. They deny any involvement but are still being held. ...

An explosion near the Coptic Orthodox Church in Misrata late yesterday evening killed one Egyptian man and left another three injured. The explosion, reported to have been caused by a bomb, targeted a services building connected to the church in the city of Misrata, killing the Egyptian national and wounding three others at the same time. News broke this morning when the Egyptian embassy in Tripoli received a call from Bishop Timotheus Bishara Adla, head of the church in the Libyan captital, informing them that the church building in Misrata had been targeted by an explosion, Foreign Ministry spokesman Amru...

Fighters yelling "Allahu akbar (God is greatest) and "Today Bani Walid is finished" sought to make their mark with gunfire and rocket-propelled grenades on a town they say still provides a refuge to many of the overthrown Libyan leader's followers.

Gadhafi Loyalists Still Battling New Western-backed Rulers in Libya Written by Alex Newman A year after the execution of former Libyan despot Moammar Gadhafi at the hands of Western-backed rebels, forces opposed to the new Tripoli-based regime ruling parts of Libya are still fighting on. According to news reports, assorted Libyan militias supposedly aligned with the embattled new government have been shelling the Gadhafi-loyalist stronghold of Bani Walid all weekend in a bid to quash the late dictator’s remaining die-hard supporters. Officials with the new government said the fighting reflected the fact that not all of Libya had been “liberated”...

Four fighters were killed in a gun battle between Libyan militias in one of Tripoli's busiest streets on Tuesday, a fresh sign that its new government is struggling to control the increasingly fractious groups that overthrew Muammar Gaddafi. Former rebels from Tripoli controlling a security compound in the capital fought off dozens of fighters from Misrata who were trying to seize a group of prisoners in a gun battle that lasted for more than an hour, medics and former rebels said. Real power still resides with the militias, more than two months after they captured and killed Gaddafi. Since then,...

Ethnic Hatred Rooted in Battle for Misrata Underlines Challenges the Nation Faces After Gadhafi -- "Traitors keep out," reads graffiti at the entrance of a housing project in an impoverished neighborhood of Misrata, the rebel-held city grappling with the physical and emotional scars of Col. Moammar Gadhafi's siege since March. A group of men sipping tea in the courtyard on a recent afternoon say the "traitors" are those who hail from Tawergha, a small town 25 miles to the south inhabited mostly by black Libyans, a legacy of its 19th-century origins as a transit town in the slave trade.

Libyan kids help refurbish weapons Forces loyal to embattled Libyan strongman Moammar Gadhafi launched a new attack on the rebel-held city of Misrata on Wednesday, with anti-government forces reporting intense shelling from three sides of the city. Thousands of government troops attacked around 6 a.m. (11 p.m. Tuesday ET), with 13 rebels reported dead by evening. Mohamed Mokhtar, a rebel fighter wounded in Wednesday's fighting, accused government troops of infiltrating rebel lines in cars bearing rebel flags. Dr. Khaled Abu Falgha, a spokesman for Misrata's Hekma hospital, said it was the bloodiest day in a week in the besieged city....

Moftah Ahmed al-Akrout looks completely out of place walking up and down the front line, shouting at rebel fighters between rapid blasts of heavy arms fire. At 71 years old, he has made it his personal mission to boost morale on the front lines of Libya's war within. Al-Akrout is a retired teacher who has decided his new calling is teaching young fighters on the battlefield to believe that they will win. "I encourage these young people here, asking them to remember God as they fight," he said. "Most of them are my former students. I support them, encourage them...

The graves outside the shrine are packed tightly together, thick stripes of cement with small concrete blocks poking out of the earth at either end. Some of the graves are about six feet apart, like those marking the remains of Khalid Abushahma, the first protester to be shot dead by Muammar Gaddafi's forces in this Libyan port city on 20 February, and of Ali al-Hadi, who died just two days ago. Other graves barely span two feet. Ibrahim Omran, a baby buried on 7 April. Amina Abdullah, a small girl, two weeks before. Sanad Aduraat, a toddler killed by a...

~ EXCERPT ~This is terrible news.  And important to note the details are still sketchy. But there are reports that photographers Tim Hetherington and Chris Hondros have been killed in Libya.The news was first posted on fellow photographer Andre Liohn's Facebook page.  Liohn is reportedly at the hospital. Hetherington was nominated for a Oscar this year for the documentary Restrepo which he co-directed with journalist Sebastian Junger.Chris Hondros is a Pulitzer-Prize nominated war photographer whose work has appeared in the NYT, Newsweek, and the Economist, to name a few. The two were reportedly covering the fighting in Misrata.  Yesterday Hetherington tweeted:...

Misrata. I think its a little sad that a month after the US went to war in Libya, the story has completely disappeared from the news, and the public seems thoroughly uninterested in the subject. Afghanistan and Iraq are the same way, but the apathy took many years to develop, in Libya it was almost instant. Politicians are talking about the economy, and gay marriage, and birth certificates, meanwhile bombs are flying and and a nation in which for better or worst we intervened is being torn to pieces. Here is a video of Misrata, a rebel held city that...

Tripoli, Libya (CNN) -- For all the talk in diplomatic circles this week of finding peace for Libya, one thing remained clear Saturday: The war is raging unabated in Misrata. In the city under siege from Moammar Gadhafi's forces and mostly inaccessible for journalists, other than those on government-organized tours, residents reported disturbing new developments Saturday. An opposition council member told CNN Saturday that loyalists were using bombs that look like perfume bottles. Photographs suggested they were shells fired from a grenade launcher that either did not explode on impact or were deliberately masked and placed in populated areas. Either...

Despite continued coalition air strikes, forces loyal to Colonel Gaddafi have regained control of Misrata, Libya's third largest city. The offensive has trapped thousands of Egyptian and sub-Saharan African workers who are trying to flee the fighting. Meanwhile, NATO members are meeting in an attempt to resolve the problem of who will ultimately be in charge of the military operations against Libya. Middle East correspondent Ben Knight reports from Tobruk.