Egypt bombs Islamist targets in Libya in retaliation for workers’ beheadings

IRBIL, Iraq — The Egyptian government said that it had bombed Islamist targets throughout Libya on Monday to retaliate for the beheading of 21 Coptic Christians whose murders on a beach apparently near Tripoli were recorded and posted Sunday on the Internet.

The beheading of the Egyptian Christians and the swift Egyptian retaliation further tangled Libya’s already byzantine power struggle, where two governments rule, one in Tripoli, the country’s capital, and one in Tobruk, near Libya’s border with Egypt. Militias, some of them with ties to al-Qaida and the Islamic State group, operate without challenge throughout the country.

While the video claimed the Egyptian workers were killed near Tripoli, in the country’s west, Egyptian airstrikes appeared primarily to hit targets in the eastern city of Derna, where the Islamic State first declared its presence in November.

It was unclear whether the murders and the Egyptian response would encourage the United States or Europe to intervene more aggressively in Libya. The United States evacuated its embassy in Tripoli last July, and European countries have abandoned their posts there as well. Italy, which once oversaw Libya as a colonial power, closed its embassy on Sunday.

The United States, in condemning the beheadings on Sunday, seemed to indicate it was unlikely to see them as a reason to expand its military campaign against the Islamic State to Libya. While saying the killing “only further galvanizes the international community to unite against ISIL,” the statement called for “a political resolution to the conflict in Libya, the continuation of which only benefits terrorist groups.” ISIL is an acronym for the Islamic State group.

“We continue to strongly support the efforts of the United Nations Special Representative of the Secretary-General, Bernardino Leon, to facilitate formation of a national unity government and help foster a political solution in Libya,” the statement said.

There was no immediate U.S. response Monday, a holiday in the United States, to the Egyptian air raids.

The murdered Copts were some of the thousands of Egyptians who have come to work in Libya’s oil rich but manpower poor economy and had been taken hostage in December.

While the video claimed the Egyptian workers were killed near Tripoli, in the country’s west, Egyptian airstrikes appeared primarily to strike targets in the eastern city of Derna, where the Islamic State first declared its presence in November.

The Egyptian government, in an announcement on state-run television at about 8:30 a.m. local time, said it had conducted “retribution and response to the criminal acts of terrorist elements and organizations inside and outside the country.”

“We stress that revenge for the blood of Egyptians, and retribution from the killers and criminals, is a right we must dutifully enforce,” the narrator said as a montage of military images played on the screen.

“Honor, nation,” it continued. “This is the slogan of men who ask for death as a sacrifice for the nation. They are men who do not know the meaning of impossible. They penetrate rocks and mountains, and they challenge difficulties. They race each other for martyrdom, on land, sea and air. Their life is a heroic epic, and their martyrdom a sacrifice for dignity and a pride for Egypt.”

The 21 hostages appeared to include about 20 Coptic Christian Egyptian guest workers kidnapped from in and around the Libyan city of Sirte in two separate abductions. Thousands of Egyptians and African guest workers work in Libya, a nation with 2 percent of the world’s oil reserves and a population of just 6 million. Despite widespread domestic poverty, most manual labor in Libya is performed by foreign workers.

The video posted Sunday night bore the logo of the media arm of the Islamic State group, which occupies portions of Syria and Iraq, and suggested that ties between the group in those countries and those who have claimed allegiance to it in Libya were closer than had been previously suspected. Groups in Afghanistan, Egypt, Pakistan and Yemen have also claimed allegiance to the Islamic State.