US bomb ISIS camp in Libya with connections to Berlin attack

Manchester attacker Salman Abedi returned from Libya just days before he killed 22 people in the deadliest attack in Britain since 7/7, friends have revealed.
Up to 6,000 ISIS fighters are currently thought to operate out of dozens of camps around the country, which has become a popular destination for foreign radicals because it is easier to get into than Syria or Iraq.
The African nation has been a hotbed of ISIS activity since at least 2014, and while it is not known if Abedi was trained there, Sousse beach attacker Seifeddine Rezgui did visit Libyan camps before carrying out his own massacre in 2015.
Anis Amri, the Berlin truck attacker, is also thought to have had contact with people in training camps in Libya before his killing spree, though it is not clear if he actually went to the country.
Libya's coast, located just across the Mediterranean from Italy, also provides the ideal staging point for attackers to be sent into Europe to carry out atrocities.
Jihadis capable of training such attackers have been flooding to Libya from Iraq and Syria as their stronghold of Mosul in Iraq falls to government troops, and their de-facto capital of Raqqa comes under threat.
American security services have been warning of the threat since ISIS first emerged in Libya, back in 2014, saying there were 'several hundreds' fighters entering training camps there at the time.
In 2015 that threat escalated fighters seized Sirte, the same town where Gaddafi was killed, establishing a base of operations with direct access to the coast.
At one point it was estimated there were 6,000 ISIS fighters in and around the city.
The same year, English-speaking female jihadis were found to be using social media to try to lure western Muslims to join them in Libya.
Three women, believed to be British, were monitored for months by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue in 2015, a UK-based thinktank.
They used a variety of social media platforms, including Twitter and encrypted messaging apps such as Surespot and Telegram, to advertise journeying to Libya as an easy way to join ISIS's so-called caliphate.
Later in 2015 Rezgui launched his attack using grenades and an AK47 rifle, using training he had picked up in a Libyan camp, having travelled there from Tunisia.
Rezgui pledged allegiance to ISIS before his attack.
Other militants who traveled with him are thought to have been responsible for another attack on the Bardo Museum, in Tunis, which killed 22.
In 2016, European leaders met with Barack Obama to discuss the growing threat, agreeing there was a 'window of opportunity' to drive them out of their power base.
As a result the US launched a series of bombing raids on training camps, and in February claimed to have killed Noureddine Chouchane, the man who masterminded the Sousse attack, along with 30 other fighters.
Later the same year, US-backed militias supported by American airstrikes forced ISIS to flee from Sirte, before Obama approved two bombing raids on more camps outside the city, killing 80.
Further US bombing raids in January 2017 targeted men with links to Berlin truck attacker Amri at two camps 45km (28miles) south of Sirte.
Then-US defense secretary Ashton Carter said the targets 'were external plotters who were actively planning operations against our allies in Europe.'
On Wednesday this week, British Home Secretary Amber Rudd said Manchester Arena bomber Abedi, who was of Libyan descent, was 'known to security services up to a point'.
Friends say he took repeated trips to the country, returning from one just days before his attack, which killed at least 22.
If Abedi manufactured the device himself, he would almost certainly have needed training of the kind which is provided at camps in Libya.
However, it is not known if this is where he acquired the expertise, or even if he made the bomb.
He is known to have gone to London before Manchester, raising the prospect he was given the device be an unknown bomb-maker before detonating it.
Home Secretary Amber Rudd said it 'seems likely' he was not acting alone in the run up to the massacre.
French interior minister Gerard Collomb said this morning that Abedi is believed to have travelled to Syria, where he also could have been trained.