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IPFS News Link • Libya

"Pray For Us": Libya Issues "Cry For Help" As ISIS Advances On Oil Fields

• http://www.zerohedge.com, by Tyler Durden

That's from Libya's National Oil Corp and as you might have guessed, it references the seizure of state oil assets by Islamic State, whose influence in the country has grown over the past year amid the power vacuum the West created by engineering the demise of Moammar Qaddafi.

The latest attacks occurred in Es Sider, a large oil port that's been closed for at least a year. 

Seven guards were killed on Monday in suicide bombings while two more lost their lives on Tuesday as ISIS attacked checkpoints some 20 miles from the port. "Es Sider and Ras Lanuf, Libya's biggest oil ports, have been closed since December 2014," Reuters notes. "They are located between the city of Sirte, which is controlled by Islamic State, and the eastern city of Benghazi."

ISIS also set fire to oil tanks holding hundreds of thousands of barrels of crude. "Four tanks in Es Sider caught fire on Tuesday, and a fifth one in Ras Lanuf the day before," Ali al-Hassi, a spokesman for the the Petroleum Facilities Guard told Bloomberg over the phone. 


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