US airstrikes on ISIS in Libya kill 40

US warplanes carried out airstrikes against ISIS-linked militants in western Libya on Friday, killing as many as 40 people in an operation targeting a suspect linked to two deadly attacks in 2015 in neighbouring Tunisia.

The airstrikes were the second by the US in three months against ISIS in Libya, where the hardline Islamist militants have exploited years of chaos following Muammar Gaddafi’s 2011 overthrow to build up a presence on the southern shores of the Mediterranean Sea.

The mayor of the Libyan city of Sabratha, Hussein al-Thwadi, said the planes struck at 3.30 am (1.30 GMT), hitting a building in the city’s Qasr Talil district, home to many foreign workers.

He said 41 people had been killed and six wounded. The death toll could not immediately be confirmed with other officials.

Photos released by the municipal authorities showed a massive crater in grey earth. Several wounded men lay bandaged in hospital.

The airstrikes targeted a house in a residential district, the municipal authorities said in a statement. The house had been rented to foreigners including Tunisians suspected of belonging to ISIS, and medium calibre weapons including machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades had been found in the rubble, the statement said.

Tunisian security sources have said they believe Tunisian ISIS fighters have been trained in camps near Sabratha, which is close to the Tunisian border.

A US military officer said among those targeted in the airstrikes was a senior Tunisian operative, Noureddine Chouchane, believed to be connected to the attacks in 2015 on a Tunis museum and the Sousse beach resort which killed dozens of foreign tourists.

Officials have said those two attacks, both claimed by ISIS, were carried out by gunmen who trained in Libya.

“We are assessing the results of the operation,” said Colonel Mark Cheadle, spokesperson for the Pentagon’s Africa Command.

The airstrikes came just days after a warning by President Barack Obama that Washington intended to “take actions where we’ve got a clear operation and a clear target in mind”.

“And we are working with our coalition partners to make sure that as we see opportunities to prevent ISIS from digging in, in Libya, we take them,” Mr Obama said on Tuesday.

ISIS runs a self-styled caliphate across swathes of Iraq and Syria. The United States has led a coalition conducting airstrikes against the group since 2014.

Mr Thwadi, the Sabratha mayor, said some Tunisians, a Jordanian and two women were among the dead, and several Tunisians who had recently arrived in Sabratha were among survivors. He gave no further details.

Since Gaddafi was overthrown five years ago by rebel forces backed by a campaign of Nato airstrikes, Libya has slipped deeper into chaos with two rival governments each backed by competing factions of former rebel brigades.

A UN-backed government of national accord is trying to win support, but is still awaiting parliamentary approval. It is opposed by factional hardliners.