(CNBC) As President Barack Obama angles for authorization to fight Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria, the extremist group may be seizing new territory right in Europe's backyard—which has some countries, especially Italy, nervous.
Reports surfaced of Libyan groups affiliating with the Islamic State (also called ISIS, or ISIL) in the middle of 2014, but the group did not cause much of a stir in the war-torn nation until it seized the 100,000-person city of Derna. In recent days, its Libyan branch has apparently grown more brazen, seizing a university in the coastal city of Sirte, and slaughtering 21 Egyptian Coptic Christians.
