'Stunned and frightened': New York Times correspondent once again from Libya portrays the ISIS surge there

ISIS fighters drive through Libya.

While Western countries concentrate on taking ISIS out in Iraq and Syria, the terrorist bunch's impact in Libya is ascending as it attempts to manufacture a potential "reinforcement capital" if its fortress in Raqqa, Syria, falls. 

A New York Times journalist who as of late came back from covering ISIS — otherwise known as the Islamic State and ISIL — in Sirte, a waterfront city in northern Libya, told radio host Hugh Hewitt on Thursday that he was "stunned and frightened" at the amount ISIS has developed there. 

"I need to say I was actually stunned and frightened at what I found on this last visit," Times correspondent David Kirkpatrick told Hewitt. 

"When I had last been close Sirte recently in February and March, it resembled a pack of nearby activists with their own particular neighborhood motivation just pulled up the Islamic State banner to make themselves look extreme," he said. "When I backtracked this time, not just did I find that they had limitlessly extended their territory ... however, the city of Sirte had turned into a sort of effectively oversaw province of the Islamic State pioneers in Raqqa." 

ISIS is "sending in their own particular executives, huge numbers of them from the Gulf, and in addition their own particular military administrators, regularly Iraqis and previous officers in Saddam Hussein's armed force to lead their operations there, and enrolling outside contenders from around the district," Kirkpatrick said. He clarified that Libya is a fizzled state brimming with urban areas represented by nearby local armies. 

"Some of those volunteer armies are ideological, and progressively, they have grabbed into two major groups battling against one another for the most part for cash and power, yet with a kind of ambiguously ideological hint," he said. "Also, into this scene comes the Islamic State ... also, it's been extending its own realm so that it now has a full and selective control of 150 miles of Libyan coastline." 

The base of operations in northern Libya likewise conveys ISIS closer toward the West. Kirkpatrick pointed out that Sirte is just 400 miles far from Sicily, Italy. 

source : business insider