US President Barack Obama has asked his key advisers to draw up options for stepping up fight against the Islamic State, IS, group, including opening a new front in Libya. Eighteen months after a US-led coalition began air strikes against IS in Iraq and Syria, multiple administration sources said that the White House wants to speed up and broaden the effort. A US Defence official said action in Libya is needed before Libya becomes a sanctuary for ISIL, before they become extremely hard to dislodge.
Meanwhile, a Syrian insurgent group said it had merged with a number of other rebel groups around Aleppo province of Syria to become a stronger fighting force in the country’s five-year-old Civil War. The group, Failaq al-Sham, said it had merged with eight other fighting groups to form a new entity called the Northern Brigade.