Libyan flights from Turkey, Jordan to make security stop in east

Egypt is forcing Libyan airliners flying between Turkey and Jordan and the capital Tripoli to stop in eastern Libya to allow the country's internationally recognized government to screen out potential Islamist fighters, officials said.
   
The move underscores Egypt's engagement in Libya to bolster the weak official government, holed up in the east since it lost  control of the capital, in its fight against Islamist militants exploiting the chaos that followed the fall of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.
   
Egyptian jets bombed suspected Islamist militant targets in the eastern Libyan city of Derna last week after Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) released a video showing the execution of 21 Egyptian Copts.
   
Libya's internationally recognized prime minister, Abdullah al-Thinni, accuses a rival government and parliament controlling Tripoli of having ties to radical Islamists, charges they deny.
   
Thinni is allied to Egypt.
   
ISIL militants have claimed attacks on foreign missions in Tripoli as well as a rocket strike on the eastern Labraq airport and a twin car suicide bombing in the eastern town of Qubbah, killing more than 40 people.
   
In a move to control air traffic to Libya, Egypt has said  that flights in either direct between the Libyan cities of Tripoli and Misrata, and Turkey or Jordan, via Egyptian air space, must make a transit stop in eastern Libya, Libyan and Egyptian officials said.
   
Thinni told Reuters Egypt had closed its air space to planes serving western Libyan airports so that departure and passport procedures would be conducted by officials from his government in the east.
   
"The (air space) was closed for security reasons, to stop terrorists and...