US envoy to the global coalition against the Islamic State Brett McGurk called Libya "an emerging threat from Africa."

WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — Islamic State (Daesh) fighters who find it increasingly difficult to enter Syria are now flooding into Libya, along with members of the Boko Haram terror group in Nigeria, US envoy to the global coalition against the Islamic State Brett McGurk said on Wednesday.

"The ISIL [Islamic State or Daesh] core in Libya… drew a lot of recruits like a magnet," McGurk told a hearing of the US House of Representatives Foreign Relations Committee. "They are now telling their fighters don't come into Syria, go to Libya."

The situation in Libya was also getting more serious because members of the similarly notorious Boko Haram terrorist organization in Nigeria and other aspiring jihadists from countries across sub-Saharan Africa were joining the Islamic State forces there, McGurk noted.

"Libya is an emerging threat from Africa because a lot of the guys are pooling up to Libya from Africa," he warned.

McGurk confirmed reports that the Islamic State and Boko Haram both sold women in slave markets and sought to slaughter Christian groups wherever they could.

The US Department of State are yet to decide whether those actions constituted genocide, McGurk added.