The US has expressed readiness to resume its air attacks on IS in Libya if requested by the UN-brokered Government of National Accord.

Despite earlier reports that it has stopped bombing in Sirte, the United States on Monday renewed authorisation to continue air strikes against Islamic State at Sirte, after a three-month blitz failed to finally propel the Government of National Accord’s Bunyan Marsous forces to victory against the so-called Islamic State (IS).

The Media Center for the Operation “Al-Bunyan Al-Marsous” reported that the civilians who left the clashing areas in Sirte said, on Sunday, that Daesh is retreating and collapsing.

Predictably, most of the attention given to foreign policy in the Middle East this election season in the United States has focused on Iraq, Syria and the Islamic State (ISIS). To the extent that Libya has been mentioned, it is in relation to the expansion of ISIS in the country …

With the chaotic scene that Libya is today, it is not possible to separate the political, security, economic and social dimensions where each one impacts hugely on the other.

The leaders of the Tripoli revolutionary brigades issued a statement on Friday calling on the Presidential Council of the UN-proposed government to either commit to the Skhirat agreement or declare it as a failure.

A group calling itself “The Brigades of Revolutionaries in Libya” rallied with several armoured vehicles in Tripoli’s Martyrs’ Square late yesterday afternoon demanding “all good Libyans” reject foreign moves to resolve the country’s political crisis. Instead they should unite behind national efforts to find a solution.

The International Crisis Group says the Libyan Political Agreement (LPA) signed in Skhirat last December has to be changed. In a hard-hitting and lengthy report published today, it says that as it stands it cannot be implemented.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) urged what it described as “the army” to allow the trapped civilians in Ganfouda, Benghazi, to leave to a safe district.

The spokesperson of Dignity Operation, Ahmed Al-Mesmary, demanded Al-Bunyan Al-Marsous forces end Sirte battles with the least causalities so his army would be able to liberate the city, according to the way he said it.