Fighters affiliated with the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, the militant group known as Isis, claimed on Sunday that they had killed up to 21 Egyptian Coptic Christians they were holding in the central Libyan city of Sirte, the second urban centre they have seized in the chaos that has raged since the 2011 toppling of Colonel Muammer Gaddafi.
Video footage set to religious music and posted to the internet purported to show black-masked Isis fighters beheading at least a dozen men at what is described as the Sirte coast.
The video, produced with the same distinct aesthetic traits and high production values of execution videos by Isis in Iraq and Syria, is the clearest sign yet that the group has expanded beyond its base in the Middle East to north Africa, where indications of the jihadi organisation’s emergence had been apparent for months.