Tripoli sites bombed, rebels claim success in east

Rebel fighters dance in a check point in Ajdabia, Libya, Monday, May 9, 2011. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)

 

TUESDAY May 10, 2011 06:48 ET

 

SALON - Tripoli sites bombed, rebels claim success in east

 

By DIAA HADID and MICHELLE FAUL, Associated Press

 

NATO warplanes struck Tripoli early Tuesday in the heaviest bombing of the Libyan capital in weeks, while rebels claimed gains amid an uptick of fighting on a long-deadlocked front line in the country's east.

 

NATO struck at least four sites in Tripoli, setting off crackling explosions that thundered through the city overnight. One strike hit a building that locals said was used by a military intelligence agency. Another targeted a government building that officials said was sometimes used by parliament members.

 

It was not immediately clear what the other two strikes hit, but one of them sent plumes of smoke that appeared to come from the sprawling compound housing members of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi's family.

 

Between explosions, an aircraft dropped burning flares. Some residents responded by raking the sky with gunfire and beeping their horns.

 

The two sides have been locked in a standoff, with the rebels controlling most of eastern Libya, and Gadhafi most of the west, including the capital, Tripoli. Exceptions in the west include pockets of embattled rebel-held towns along the border with Tunisia, and Misrata on the coast.

 

The intensified air campaign comes as NATO has faced criticism for not doing enough to break Gadhafi's grip.

 

"We have succeeded in taking out a significant part of Gadhafi's military, we have significantly degraded his war machine," NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said Monday during a visit to Atlanta. "So far our operation has been a success but there's still work to do."

 

NATO said its warplanes on Sunday targeted three command and control centers near Tripoli. Fifteen ammunition stores were hit in the vicinity of Mizdah, as were one tank and a command center near Misrata.

 

But a NATO official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the matter, said the alliance could not comment immediately on Tuesday's strikes in Tripoli but hoped to say something at a news conference later in the day.

 

In Tripoli, government escorts did not allow reporters near the site of one building that was hit in the NATO air attack early Tuesday. Local residents said the building, which had buckled from the bombing, was used by a military intelligence agency.

 

Reporters, who may not leave their Tripoli hotel without government escorts, were shown damage done to a nearby hospital. A physician, Dr. Mustafa Rahim, said one child was badly injured, though but would not allow reporters to see him, saying the 4-year-old boy was in intensive care.

 

Another strike targeted a building -- struck once previously -- that two employees said was used by parliament members and housed a library for research into Gadhafi's writings.

 

The handsome pastel-colored building, built by Italians when they ruled Libya in the 1920s, once served as Italy's naval headquarters and was considered an iconic Tripoli site.

 

The Tripoli bombing came just hours after heavy fighting was reported Monday on the eastern front, south of Ajdabiya, a rebel-held town about 90 miles (150 kilometers) south of Benghazi, the rebel headquarters in the east.

 

At a checkpoint outside Ajdabiya on Monday afternoon, an AP photographer counted about 100 pickup trucks coming back from the front, each carrying four or five rebel fighters, many firing their weapons into the air, shouting and dancing.

 

Rebel commander Zakaria al-Mismari told reporters that Gadhafi forces had advanced on their positions with about a dozen vehicles before dawn Monday. "By God's grace we managed to defeat them and outflank them, and we attacked 12 of their vehicles," he said.

 

Doctors at Ajdabiya hospital told the AP that ambulances had brought the bodies of four rebel fighters.

 

The rebels said they had retreated because they were told NATO was launching airstrikes against Gadhafi forces there, and planes were heard from Ajdabiya later Monday.

 

The rebels were deliberately vague about where the front is, some saying the fighting had taken place 12 to 25 miles (20 to 40 kilometers) from Ajdabiya, others placing it nearer to the oil town of Brega. The location could not be independently confirmed because journalists were not allowed past a checkpoint south of Ajdabiya to which the rebels had retreated.

 

The rebel army has been bogged down for weeks near Ajdabiya, unable to move on to Brega, which has an oil terminal and Libya's second-largest hydrocarbon complex.

 

The rebels say their weapons cannot reach more than about 12 miles (20 kilometers) while Gadhafi's forces can fire rockets and shells up to twice that distance. Rebel pleas for heavier arms from abroad have received no response.

 

Also Monday, Gadhafi's forces shelled a northern Misrata neighborhood where many families from the besieged city center have fled to, said Abdel Salam, who identified himself as a resident-turned-fighter. He said NATO airstrikes hit targets on the city's southern edges, an area where government forces have been concentrated.

 

The fighting was threatening the port area, the city's only lifeline, preventing some aid ships from docking, Abdel Salam said. A ship carrying medical supplies and baby food was able to dock in Misrata on Monday, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross.

 

It was the first ship to arrive since Wednesday, when Gadhafi's forces fired a barrage of rockets into the port as the International Organization of Migration was evacuating nearly 1,000 people. The ICRC said it would use the chartered ship as a floating platform as its team works to reduce the danger of unexploded weapons on the streets of Misrata, visit prisoners detained by the rebels and help reunite families.

 

The U.N. refugee agency, meanwhile, appealed to European countries to step up efforts to rescue people fleeing Libya in overloaded boats.

 

A spokeswoman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, Melissa Fleming, told reporters in Geneva on Tuesday that "any boat that is leaving Libya should be considered, at first glance, as a boat in need of assistance."

 

Fleming said a senior Somali diplomat in Tripoli told the agency that 16 bodies including those of two babies have so far been retrieved from a boat carrying 600 people that sank just outside the Libyan capital Friday.

 

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Faul reported from Benghazi, Libya. Associated Press writer Frank Jordans in Geneva contributed to this report.

Shortages choke Tripoli as sanctions take hold

Shortages choke Tripoli as sanctions take hold

 

By DIAA HADID Associated Press © 2011 The Associated Press

 

TRIPOLI, Libya — Cars sat abandoned in miles-long fuel lines, motorists traded angry screams with soldiers guarding gas stations, and many shops were closed Sunday on what should have been a work day.

 

In ever-multiplying ways, residents in the Libyan capital are feeling the sting of shortages from uprising-related disruptions of supplies.

 

The shortages are a dramatic sign of how Libya's nearly 3-month-old rebellion — and the resulting chaos — is affecting daily life in Moammar Gadhafi's stronghold and other western areas of Libya still under his rule. International sanctions have begun to bite, many supply routes are unstable, and there are shortages of skilled people in some sectors to keep the city running smoothly.

 

Yet the deprivations — however irksome — pale in comparison to the situation in the port city of Misrata, the only rebel stronghold in western Libya. It has been under siege by land for two months, with hundreds of civilians killed, and Gadhafi's forces are now trying to block access to the port that is Misrata's only lifeline.

 

In Tripoli, the shortages were obvious, even to Western reporters who may only leave their hotel with a government minder and guard. It is less clear what the eventual impact might be on Gadhafi's ability to rule.

 

An engineer based in Tripoli said Libyan TV blames the shortages on NATO, which is providing military muscle against Gadhafi, while average residents blame hardships on the regime. The engineer requested anonymity, saying he did not want to provoke the government.

 

The spokesman for the rebel administration in the eastern city of Benghazi, where there is no fuel shortage, blamed Tripoli's shortages squarely on Gadhafi.

 

"He takes all the gasoline for his forces, and that is why there is none left for anyone else," Abdel-Hafidh Ghoga told journalists.

 

In some ways, Tripoli appeared to be divided into those with government perks and those without.

 

In an hours-long tour of the capital, cars decked with pictures of Gadhafi — his arms raised and streaks of light emerging from behind him — muscled into miles-long lines for gasoline. A minivan carrying Western reporters also pushed in.

 

A young black-uniformed attendant clutched a thick wad of Libyan currency, suggesting that black market rates for fuel were running far higher than the government's set price of 12 cents (150 dirhams) a liter.

 

Shortages were apparent in other ways: a few dozen people crowded around a bakery in central Tripoli, unsure if its good were being depleted. A minder said most of the bakers were Egyptian laborers who fled the country as unrest worsened.

 

One translator for the foreign reporters looked frustrated when, soon after he lit a cigarette, a driver told him to extinguish it and rejoin reporters in their vehicle.

 

"Do you know how much these cost?" he shot at the driver.

 

He later explained: a pack of Marlboros — a fancy brand in Libya — now cost six dinars, up from 2.5 dinars before unrest began three months ago.

 

Though many stores remained shuttered on Sunday, several stores in the picturesque Italian quarter were open, notably the gold shops. But beyond their glittering window displays, they held no wares inside. One store was displaying fake gold, according to the goldsmith who said he kept the authentic goods at home and had no customers in any case.

 

Along the road linking Tripoli to Libya's western border with Tunisia, long fuel lines were visible in a series of coastal towns. Libyan-plated cars crowded gas stations in two small Tunisian towns close to the border, and a taxi driver there complained that shortages in Libya were driving up the price in Tunisia.

 

Tunisia's official TAP news agency said Sunday that dozens of shells from fighting in Libya have fallen on Tunisian territory, drawing a new government protest. There were no reported injuries after the shells landed as Libyan troops fought with rebels to regain control of the Wazen-Dhehiba border post.

 

TAP quoted the Foreign Ministry as warning that Tunisia will take "all measures needed" within the law to ensure protection of its citizens and territory. It didn't elaborate.

 

Some fresh details about besieged Misrata were provided Sunday by a resident of the port city who arrived in Benghazi to update the rebel administration on the latest developments.

 

"Morale is very, very high," said Abdulbaset Abumzirig, a lawyer and playwright, describing "an incredible spirit of cohesion and cooperation" in Misrata.

 

He had left Misrata on a tugboat an hour before Gadhafi's forces started attacking the fuel depot late Friday.

 

"If you walk in the streets, it looks like it's normal.... All the shops are open, even bakeries and restaurants, even though there is a slight danger of a shell hitting," said Abumzirig, who heads a rebel youth wing in Misrata.

 

He said most of the population of nearly 500,000 are determined to remain in Misrata, like the wife and 8-month-old son that he left behind to visit Benghazi.

 

In Washington, President Barack Obama's national security adviser, Tom Donilon, discussed Gadhafi's prospects during an interview aired on "Fox News Sunday."

 

"Gadhafi is still in power today," Donilon said. "We have done the following, though. We have protected civilians who were under threat in Benghazi and other towns in eastern Libya, and we have organized the international community to continue to put the pressure on him. Time will not be on Gadhafi's side."

 

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Associated Press writer Michelle Faul in Benghazi contributed to this report.

 

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Man unknowingly liveblogs Bin Laden operation

Miami Herald - Man unknowingly liveblogs Bin Laden operation

By DIAA HADID

Associated Press

CAIRO -- A computer programmer, startled by a helicopter clattering above his quiet Pakistani town in the early hours of the morning Monday, did what any social-media addict would do: he began sending messages to the social networking site Twitter.

With his tweets, 33-year-old Sohaib Athar, who moved to the sleepy town of Abbottabad to escape the big city, became in his own words "the guy who liveblogged the Osama raid without knowing it."

Soon the sole helicopter multiplied into several and gunfire and explosions rocked the air above the town, and Athar's tweets quickly garnered 14,000 followers as he apparently became the first in the world to describe the U.S. operation to kill one of the world's most wanted militants.

His first tweet was innocuous: "Helicopter hovering above Abbottabad at 1AM (is a rare event)."

The noise alarmed Athar, who had moved to the upscale area of Abbottabad to get away from city life after his wife and child were badly injured in a car accident in the sprawling city of Lahore, according to his blog in July.

Nestled in the mountains around 60 miles (95 kilometers) northeast of the capital, Abbottabad is a quiet, leafy town featuring a military academy, the barracks for three army regiments and even its own golf course.

As the operation to kill Osama Bin Laden unfolded, Athar "liveblogged" what he was hearing in real time, describing windows rattling as bombs exploded.

He questioned whose helicopters might be flying overhead. "The few people online at this time of the night are saying one of the copters was not Pakistani," he tweeted.

Athar then said one of the aircraft appeared to have been shot down. Two more helicopters rushed in, he reported.

Throughout the battle, he related the rumors swirling through town: it was a training accident. Somebody was killed. The aircraft might be a drone. The army was conducting door-to-door searches in the surrounding area. The sound of an airplane could be heard overhead.

Athar did not respond to media requests for comment - he explained in another tweet that a filter he set up to stop his e-mail box from flooding could be culling out requests for interviews.

Soon, however, the rumbling of international events far beyond the confines of this quiet upscale suburb began to dawn on Athar, and he realized what he might be witnessing.

"I think the helicopter crash in Abbottabad, Pakistan and the President Obama breaking news address are connected," he tweeted.

Eight hours and about 35 tweets later, the confirmation came: "Osama Bin Laden killed in Abbottabad, Pakistan," Athar reported. "There goes the neighborhood."

Despite siege, Syrians vow to keep protesting

Despite siege, Syrians vow to keep protesting

The Syrian military intensified its vigorous assault on the besieged city at the center of the country's uprising Sunday as defiant residents who have been pinned down in their homes for nearly a week struggled to find food, pass along information and bury their dead.

By DIAA HADID

Associated Press

CAIRO —

The Syrian military intensified its vigorous assault on the besieged city at the center of the country's uprising Sunday as defiant residents who have been pinned down in their homes for nearly a week struggled to find food, pass along information and bury their dead.

President Bashar Assad is determined to crush the six-week-old revolt, which began in the southern city of Daraa but quickly spread across the nation of some 23 million people.

Now, the once-unthinkable protests are posing the most serious challenge to four decades of rule by the Assad family in one of the most repressive and tightly controlled countries in the Middle East.

"The security solution isn't working. People are still demonstrating," Damascus-based human rights activist Razan Zaitouneh told The Associated Press by telephone. "They can't stop these (protests) now."

A drought-plagued city near the Jordanian border, Daraa has been without water, fuel or electricity since Monday, when the regime sent in troops backed by tanks and snipers to crush protests seeking the ouster of Assad. The 45-year-old, British-trained eye doctor inherited power from his father 11 years ago but failed to fulfill early promises of reform.

He has portrayed the unrest as a foreign conspiracy by extremists and armed thugs, not true reform-seekers.

The death toll has soared to 545 nationwide from government forces firing on demonstrators - action that has drawn international condemnation and U.S. financial penalties on top figures in his regime.

Syrian army tanks shelled the old quarter of Daraa on Sunday and rolled in six armored vehicles, flanked on either side by two buses packed with more security forces, residents said. Snipers nesting on rooftops and hiding in high mosque minarets have kept people cowering in fear inside their homes.

But residents remained defiant and resourceful, using battery-powered computers and satellite telephones to communicate with the outside world, and sneaking through alleyways to share information. With soldiers stationed at cemeteries - apparently an attempt to pinpoint the families of protesters - many were hiding corpses in refrigerated trucks.

Unable to leave their homes, Daraa residents chant "God is Great!" to each other from their windows in the evenings, infuriating security forces and raising each other's spirits.

"Our houses are close to each other, so even though we can't go outside, we stand by the windows and chant," said a Daraa resident, speaking to the AP by satellite phone. "Our neighbors can hear us and they respond."

Syrian troops opened fire above their heads to silence them, the resident said.

Other areas of the country also have come under military control, but Daraa has faced the most serious stranglehold. It was in Daraa that the protest movement kicked off six weeks ago, sparked by the arrest of a group of teenagers who scrawled anti-government graffiti on a wall in Daraa. Now, the city has become a symbol of the uprising.

The witness' accounts of the siege on Daraa could not be independently verified. Syria has banned nearly all foreign media and restricted access to trouble spots, making it almost impossible to confirm the dramatic events shaking one of the most authoritarian regimes in the Arab world.

In a posting on a Syrian revolution website, one activist joked that if the newly married royals Prince William and Kate Middleton wanted to honeymoon somewhere away from media attention, Syria would be an excellent location.

The Obama administration hit three top Syrian officials as well as Syria's intelligence agency and Iran's Revolutionary Guard with sanctions over the crackdown.

"I think it's clear that (Assad) is willing to slaughter his own people," Arizona Sen. John McCain told the CBS show "Face the Nation" on Sunday. "The question is, what can we do to affect the outcome? And frankly, I don't see a military option. Libya, they had a group of people who at least were semi-organized that we could support."

The unrest in Syria has international repercussions because of the country's alliances with militant groups like Lebanon's Hezbollah and with Shiite powerhouse Iran. If the regime in Syria falls, the instability has the potential to upend the regional power balance in a part of the world that already is riven with strife.

In recent weeks, there have been small signs that cracks are developing in the regime.

Hundreds of members of Assad's ruling Baath Party have resigned over the crackdown.

Human rights activists uploaded a video to YouTube on Sunday that they say showed another 200 party members publicly stepping down in Rasten, where protests turned violent on Friday.

"Our martyrs don't just deserve that we resign from the party. They deserve that we step on this party!" said one man speaking into a microphone as a few thousand residents crowded before an open stage.

The president has responded with overtures of reform coupled with a crackdown, but the rising death toll has enraged protesters to the extent that they are now demanding nothing less than the downfall of the regime.

On Saturday, Syrian Prime Minister Adel Safar said the government is preparing a "comprehensive plan for the aspired reforms" in the coming weeks "in response to the citizens' demands and needs."

But previous overtures have failed to dampen the protests, and Safar's announcement - which once would have been considered a leap forward for reform - barely registered with those at the heart of the rebellion.