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By Libya Herald reporters.
Benghazi, 13 August 2016:
Security forces in Benghazi appear to have begun to arrest people suspected of terrorist connections. Police reported that they had detained one man whose phone was said to contain the phone numbers of “extremists in Tripoli”.
It is unclear how many other arrests have been made so far nor whether the operation is intelligence-led. A group of the city’s police is being sent to Cyprus to train in electronic surveillance.
On Friday Benghazi council was ousted and a city military commander appointed by Major General Abdul Razzaq Al-Nazhuri, since June the military governor of northern Cyrenaica.
There have long been concerns that when IS and Ansar Al-Sharia terrorists, along with their allies in the Benghazi Revolutionaries’ Shoura Council, are finally defeated in Gwarsha, Ganfouda and their Sabri and Souk Al-Hut outposts, the Islamists will revert to a more tradition terror campaign, using sleeper cells and hermetically-sealed networks.
If a general campaign is indeed being mounted against suspected terrorist sympathisers, it will add to the concern that the east of the country is becoming increasingly militarised.
Meanwhile the military advance against the terrorists appears stalled. IS claimed today that it had hit an army assembly point in Gwarsha with artillery and heavy-machine gun fire. They said that their counter attack had forced the soldiers to withdraw. It was not possible to obtain a comment on the firefight from the army.
