Report: US to train Libyan security forces

The U.S. is planning to train Libyan security forces for counterterrorism missions, Reuters reports.

{mosads}The training of 5,000 to 7,000 conventional and special forces troops comes amid concerns that al Qaeda-linked militants are a growing threat across the region. Last year’s attack against the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya, left a U.S. ambassador and three other Americans dead and raised concerns that Islamist militants had largely taken over the country after the U.S. helped depose strongman Moammar Gadhafi.

“Suffice to say that there is going to be a kind of conventional effort to train their conventional forces, between 5 and 7,000 conventional forces,” the head of U.S Special Operations Command, Adm. William McRaven, reportedly said over the weekend.

“And we have a complementary effort on the special operations side to train a certain number of their forces to do counter-terrorism.”

He acknowledged that training Libyan forces wasn’t without risk.

“Right now as we go forward to try and find a good way to build up the Libyan security forces so they are not run by militias, we are going to have to assume some risks,” McRaven said, according to the news service.

“There is probably some risk that some of the people we will be training with do not have the most clean records. But at the end of the day it is the best solution we can find to train them to deal with their own problems.”