More reports that IS has now retreated back towards Sirte after being pushed back from Sidra by the Petroleum Facilities Guard (PFG).
Syria's opposition are demanding confidence-building steps from Damascus including a prisoner release before negotiations due this month, officials have told Reuters. Three opposition leaders said that they and rebels plan to deliver that message to Staffan de Mistura, the U.N.'s envoy for Syria, on January 5.
The demand "could complicate efforts to start the talks," Reuters reports.
CBS News is quoting Ali al-Hassi, a spokesman for the armed forces led by Ibrahim al-Jadhran that control most of Libya's oil fields, as saying that six of their fighters were killed in today's clashes with IS militants in Sidra.
IS militants reportedly attacked Sidra from three directions, assisted by Jadhran's brother who is believed to have joined IS.
Jadhran, who took part in the rebellion against Muammar Qaddafi in 2011, has declared himself the guardian of Libya's oil crescent.
The Petroleum Facilities Guard (PFG), whose forces pushed IS militants back from Sidra in Libya today, have said that IS are now stationed 30 kilometers away waiting for the opportunity to launch a second attack on Libya's biggest oil port.
The PFG are led by Ibrahim al-Jadhran, a former commander who took part in the rebellion against Muammar Qaddafi in 2011.
A storage tank that caught fire when IS militants attacked the Libyan oil port of Sidra today was close to the oil port of Ras Lanuf, Mohamed Elharari, a spokesman for the state-run National Oil Corp, has told Bloomberg.
“An oil storage tank caught fire and there was a big explosion,” Elharari said.
The IS group in Libya has released images of its militants who it says were killed carrying out suicide attacks today in Sidra.
AFP has a couple more small details of today's attacks by IS on oil facilities in northern Libya.
Bashir Bouhdhira, a colonel in the army loyal to Libya's internationally recognized government, said that Sidra was "attacked by a convoy of a dozen vehicles belonging to [IS]."
"They then launched an attack on the town of Ras Lanouf via the south but did not manage to enter."
IS has been trying to push east from the coastal city of Sirte to Libya's oil crescent area for several weeks.
Islamic State theologians have issued an extremely detailed ruling on when “owners” of women enslaved by the extremist group can have sex with them, in an apparent bid to curb what they called violations in the treatment of captured women, Reuters writes.
The fatwa was among a huge trove of documents captured by U.S. Special Operations Forces during a raid targeting a top Islamic State official in Syria in May. Reuters has reviewed the document, which has not been previously published, but couldn’t independently confirm its authenticity.
Among the fatwa’s injunctions are bans on a father and son having sex with the same female slave; and the owner of a mother and daughter having sex with both. Joint owners of a female captive are similarly enjoined from intercourse because she is viewed as “part of a joint ownership.”
Reuters has shared a U.S.government translated copy of the fatwa.
The IS group has set up departments to handle "war spoils," including slaves, and the exploitation of natural resources such as oil, Reuters reports.
The hierarchical bureaucracy, including petty rivalries between officials, and legal codes in the form of religious fatwas are detailed in a cache of documents seized by U.S. Special Operations Forces in a May raid in Syria that killed top IS financial official Abu Sayyaf. Reuters has reviewed some of the documents.
The destruction of Syria's chemical weapons stocks declared by the Syrian Arab Republic is complete, according to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW).
OPCW's Director General, Ambassador Ahmet Üzümcü, said that the process "closes an important chapter in the elimination of Syria's chemical weapon program as we continue efforts to clarify Syria's declaration and address ongoing use of toxic chemicals as weapons in that country."