The Wall Street Journal is reporting that seven oil tanks are now on fire in Libya's eastern oil ports and says there are fears that the IS assault on Sidra and Ras Lanuf will inflict long term damage on Libya's oil industry.
Five of the seven tanks are ablaze at Sidra and two at Ras Lanuf. Firefighters have been unable to enter the facilities because of the potential danger.
A spokesman for Libya's Petroleum Facilities Guard (PFG), which protects Libya's national oil installations, has said that there is no coordination with Libya’s Gen. Khalifa Haftar, who leads forces allied to the country’s recognized government, over air strikes against the IS group around Sidra, according to the Al Wasat news site.
IS attacked Libya's oil facilities including in Sidra, on January 4 and 5.
PFG commander Ibrahim Jadhran criticized Haftar on January 5, saying that he and IS are "two faces of the same coin."
Fires caused by fighting between Islamic State militants and guards near Libya's biggest oil ports have now spread to five oil storage tanks, a Petroleum Facilities Guard spokesman has said, Reuters is reporting.
Four oil storage tanks were reported as being on fire earlier today.
The President of Libya's House of Representatives, Aqila Saleh, has called on the international community to end an arms embargo to help fight the IS group and other Islamist miilitias.
Saleh's request came after the IS group attacked Libya's largest oil port of Sidra on January 4 and 5.
Libya's Gen. Khalifa Haftar, who leads forces allied to the country's recognized government, also called for an end to an arms embargo on December 17 after holding talks with the U.N. envoy on a peace agreement.
Iraq may be celebrating Army Day, but Iraqi officials have said that the IS group has increased its attacks on the western town of Haditha, where 45 Iraqi security forces and Sunni tribal fighters have been killed in clashes with the extremists over the past three days, AP reports.
Khalid Salman, a provincial councilman from Haditha, said Wednesday that another 30 pro-government fighters have been wounded. Shaalan al-Nimrawi, a local tribal sheikh, confirms the casualty figures.
The IS attacks on Haditha come a week after Iraqi forces backed by U.S.-led airstrikes pushed the extremists out of central Ramadi, the capital of the sprawling Anbar province, which includes Haditha.
Brett McGurk, the U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for the Global Coalition to Counter IS, has tweeted that Iraq is celebrating Army Day today.
Abdel Moneim Dwillah, the 15-year-old Tripoli teenager thought to be one of the suicide bombers used by IS to attack the oil port of Sirta on January 4, was recruited in a mosque in Tripoli, Libya's Al-Wasat is reporting, citing the pan-Arabic Al Hayat newspaper.
Al Hayat quoted security sources as saying that Abdel Moneim's cellphone had shown he was in Al Khums, a city on the coast east of Tripoli. The phone was later turned off and after a time Abdel Moneim called his brother in Tripoli and told him he was in Sirte, "waging jihad" with IS.
Syrian activists and an official with the Ahrar al-Sham ultraconservative Islamist rebel group say gunmen have shot and killed Abu Rateb al-Homsy, the group's leader in Homs province.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that al-Homsy was killed when in a car with his wife in Farhaniyeh village.
Jihad researcher Kevin Jackson has tweeted more details from the biography of Abu al-Mughirah al-Qahtani, the now-dead leader of IS in Libya.
IS posted the biography, in Arabic, to the JustPaste.it site last night.
In it, Qahtani is praised as one of the founders of IS and the person who led its expansion in North Africa, Jackson tweets.
Qahtani was jailed twice, first in 2008.
Syrian peace talks will be affected by Iran's diplomatic spat with Saudi Arabia, but Tehran will "stay committed" to the talks, Iran's Depurty Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian has said.