Unarmed American surveillance drones fly reconnaissance missions from Tunisia’s main air base outside Bizerte, the northernmost city in Africa, to capture terrorists who try to infiltrate through the country’s border with Libya and other areas, American military officials told New York Times on Saturday.
Tunisia has struggled due to the threats posed by its “porous borders” with Libya and Algeria, which serve as transit areas for Al-Qaeda’s branch in North Africa and the remains of Islamic State militants in Libya, according to New York Times.
The problem became apparent in 2012 after the US Embassy in the capital of Tunis was attacked.
Three days earlier that year in neighboring Libya, militants attacked the US mission in the eastern city of Benghazi, killing Four Americans, including Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens.
The US has launched several airstrikes against Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State in Libya as “ISIS Libya remains a formidable regional terrorist threat,” Lt. Gen. Robert Ashley, the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, told the Senate Armed Services Committee in written testimony in March, 2018.
Previously, the US Africa Command (Africom) launched on 29 December an airstrike against Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), near al-Uwaynat town, located in Libya’s southwestern desert, killing 11 “terrorists.”
