Egypt launches revenge attacks on IS

Egypt has launched air strikes against Islamic State (IS) targets in Libya after the extremist group released a grisly video showing a mass beheading of Coptic Christians held hostage for weeks.

A spokesman for the Armed Forces General Command announced the strikes on state radio, marking the first time Cairo has publicly acknowledged taking military action in neighbouring Libya, which has been beset by militia violence for months.

The statement said the warplanes targeted weapons caches and training camps before returning safely. It said the strikes were “to avenge the bloodshed and to seek retribution from the killers”.

“Let those far and near know that Egyptians have a shield that protects them,” it said.

Libya's air force meanwhile announced it had launched strikes in the eastern city of Darna, which was taken over by an IS affiliate last year.

The video purporting to show the mass beheading of the hostages was released last night by militants in Libya affiliated with IS.

The killings raise the possibility that the extremist group – which controls about a third of Syria and Iraq in a self-declared caliphate – has established a direct affiliate less than 500 miles from the southern tip of Italy. One of the militants in the video makes direct reference to that possibility, saying the group now plans to “conquer Rome”.

The militants had been holding 21 Egyptian Coptic Christian labourers rounded up from the city of Sirte in December and January. It was not clear from the video whether all 21 hostages were killed.

It was one of the first such beheading videos from an IS affiliate to come from outside the group’s core territory in Syria and Iraq.