Activist: Syrian forces kill 4 in restive province

Denver Post - Activist: Syrian forces kill 4 in restive province
By DIAA HADID Associated Press

BEIRUT—Syrian tanks and helicopters swept through a restive northwestern province Wednesday, shelling at least one village in an attack that killed four people, activists said.
Ammar Qurabi, head of the National Organization for Human Rights in Syria, cited witnesses as saying the military shelled Rameh village to quell daily protests against President Bashar Assad in the area.
Hundreds of other residents fled the village, an activist said by telephone from the area.
"The army is entering village after village," he told The Associated Press, asking that his name not be used out of fear for his safety. "The men have fled to Damascus and into the mountains. They are afraid they'll be tortured or arrested."
Syrian activists say 1,400 people have been killed as Assad tries to crush a nationwide pro-democracy movement that has lasted more than three months. The regime disputes that death toll and says "armed thugs" and foreign conspirators are behind the unrest.
The military operation in Idlib province is part of a sweep against dissident centers the government fears could become a base for a wider rebellion. Besides Rameh, the Syrian army advanced on a series of other hamlets: Marayn, Ihsim, Barshoun and the Roman-era village of al-Bara.
The activist said army units set up checkpoints at the entrances of some villages, checking the identity cards of young men.
Over the past three weeks, thousands of Syrians have streamed into refugee camps in neighboring Turkey.
On Wednesday, hundreds of refugees at two camps along the border held a simultaneous, hour-long protest against Assad and denounced the violence in Idlib.
It is nearly impossible to independently verify the claims on either side of the conflict in Syria, although witness accounts from refugees streaming out of Syria tell of a brutal government response to protests. Syria has banned most foreign journalists and restricts coverage by reporters inside the country.
In an attempt to rebuff those witness accounts, the government has offered several escorted trips to flashpoint areas. Syrian army officials took reporters Wednesday to the Turkish border and said there were rebels trying to stage an armed insurrection.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, citing military rules, the officials said the men erected checkpoints around a camp in the area, preventing Syrian forces from entering.
The army officials said they were watching the situation but had no plans to wrest back the area yet.
An Associated Press reporter traveling with army officials could see the camps from a nearby wooded hilltop, but there was no way to glean any details about the people living inside.
———
Associated Press writer Mehmet Guzel in Yayladagi, Turkey, contributed to this report.


Read more: Activist: Syrian forces kill 4 in restive province - The Denver Post http://www.denverpost.com/ci_18375999#ixzz1QkKmKYrO
Read The Denver Post's Terms of Use of its content: http://www.denverpost.com/termsofuse

Israeli soldier marks 5th year in Hamas captivity

Israeli activists calling for the release of captured Israeli soldier Gilad Schalit block a road as they demonstrate outside the Jerusalem International Convention Center ahead of a planned speech by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in Jerusalem, Thursday, June 23, 2011. The International Committee of the Red Cross appealed to Palestinian armed groups on Thursday to prove an Israeli soldier captured five years ago is alive. Schalit was captured June 25, 2006, by Hamas-linked militants in a cross-border raid. Banners read in Hebrew, left to right: "Bibi, 'Those who dare, win.' Have you forgotten?", "And if it was Yair Netanyahu?" (son of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu), "Is the only way to return from captivity in a coffin?". Photo: Bernat Armangue / AP

Seattle Post - Israeli soldier marks 5th year in Hamas captivity

DIAA HADID, Associated Press

JERUSALEM (AP) — Gaza Strip militants vowed Saturday that an Israeli soldier captured five years ago would not "see the light" until Palestinian prisoners held by Israel were released.

In Israel, some 400 supporters of Sgt. Gilad Schalitgathered at the border crossing where he was seized by gunmen linked to Gaza's ruling Hamas movement on June 25, 2006.

They waved Israeli flags emblazoned with his likeness and demanded the government do more to secure his release. A relative read a letter from Schalit's grandfather faulting the state for failing to bring the 24-year-old home.

"The people involved talk to us from time to time, stroke our heads, but my beloved grandchild Gilad, through no fault of his own, is still rotting away in a Hamas dungeon like a common criminal," Zvi Schalit wrote.

In Jerusalem, Schalit's parents, his brother and his brother's girlfriend chained themselves to one another and to a railing on the side of a small road leading to the prime minister's residence.

"We are marking five years' anniversary of Gilad's captivity in the Hamas hands and we, as you can see, are also a family in captivity for five years," said Schalit's father, Noam Schalit.

Schalit, a tank crewman, was taken captive after militants tunneled under the Israeli border, killed two soldiers at a border post and dragged him bleeding into Gaza. Hamas has allowed no one to visit him and last offered a sign of life in October 2009.

Hamas' threat to continue holding him until its demands are met was delivered in a 39-second video posted Saturday on the group's website.

Hamas wants Israel to release hundreds of Palestinian militants, including the masterminds of attacks that killed dozens of Israelis. Israeli officials have balked, arguing that releasing the men would put more Israelis in danger.

In the northern Gaza town of Jabaliya, families of some of the estimated 7,500 Palestinian prisoners incarcerated in Israeli jails sat with pictures of their imprisoned sons emblazoned on birthday cakes. Number candles were planted on the cakes, signifying the 12 to 22 years the men had spent in Israeli prisons.

The White House and U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon issued statements calling for Schalit's immediate release.

Schalit holds dual French-Israeli citizenship, and Israeli media reported that the French ambassador to Israel brought Schalit's parents a letter from French President Nicolas Sarkozyassuring Schalit that "France will not abandon you."

Earlier this week, Hamas rebuffed an appeal from the International Committee of the Red Cross to prove Schalit was still alive. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu retaliated by saying Palestinian prisoners would be stripped of access to higher education and other unspecified privileges.

Palestinian prisoners have reported that Israeli corrections officials have been confiscating cell phones that had been smuggled to them, and that leading Hamas prisoners have been transferred to solitary confinement.

Kadoura Fares, head of the Palestinian prisoners association, said Israel had already severely limited prisoners' visitation rights.

Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri called the new measures announced by the prime minister "a violation of international law and international humanitarian law" and urged international intervention to block them.

In ravaged Libya, ghosts of a Jewish past

I

Seattle Times - In ravaged Libya, ghosts of a Jewish past

What was once the most beautiful synagogue in Libya's capital city can now be entered only by sneaking through a hole smashed in a back wall, climbing over dusty trash and crossing a stairwell strewn with abandoned shoes to a space occupied by cooing pigeons.

By DIAA HADID

Associated Press

TRIPOLI, Libya —

What was once the most beautiful synagogue in Libya's capital city can now be entered only by sneaking through a hole smashed in a back wall, climbing over dusty trash and crossing a stairwell strewn with abandoned shoes to a space occupied by cooing pigeons.

The synagogue, Dar al-Bishi, was once the center of a prosperous Jewish community, one whose last remnants were expelled decades ago in the early days of Moammar Gadhafi's regime.

Inside Libya, little trace of them remains. Abroad, however, surviving members and descendants of the community are very much alive, watching with fascination from afar as Gadhafi's forces and a NATO-backed rebel insurgency battle for control of a country some of them still see as home.

"I have somewhat mixed feelings. I am sympathetic to people who want him out," said Libya-born Gina Bublil-Waldman, referring to the embattled dictator.

But Bublil-Waldman, who heads an organization of Jews from Arab countries in San Francisco, said she was still angry and hurt by the memory of her family's expulsion from Libya. Those feelings remained strong, she said, and at this point she "would be afraid to go."

Navit Barel, a 34-year-old Israeli of Libyan descent, said the upheaval made her want to visit the country where her parents were born. Her mother and father, now deceased, both grew up near the Dar al-Bishi synagogue.

"I feel like it brought back my yearning to talk to my father," she said.

Libyan Jews seem proud of their heritage and even nostalgic for their ancestral home. But they are also bitter at the mistreatment they suffered at the hands of Libyan Muslims and at the eventual elimination of an ancient native community in a wave of anti-Jewish violence linked to the rise of the Zionist movement and the creation of Israel.

Today, most of the community's few crumbling remains lie in Hara Kabira, a sandy slum that was once Tripoli's Jewish quarter.

Inside the Dar al-Bishi synagogue, faded Hebrew above an empty ark where Torah scrolls were once kept reads "Shema Israel" - "Hear, O Israel" - the beginning of a Jewish prayer. The floor is strewn with decades of garbage.

What was once a ritual bath next to the synagogue now houses impoverished Libyan families. In a nearby alley, three arched doorways in a yellow facade are decorated with Jewish stars of David. The building was once the Ben Yehuda Jewish youth club, said Maurice Roumani, a Libyan-born Israeli and Libyan Jewry expert. Barel's father, Eliyahu, taught Hebrew there.

The government now owns it.

Jews first arrived in what is now Libya some 2,300 years ago. They settled mostly in coastal towns like Tripoli and Benghazi and lived under a shifting string of rulers, including Romans, Ottoman Turks, Italians and ultimately the independent Arab state that has now descended into civil war.

Some prospered as merchants, physicians and jewelers. Under Muslim rule, they saw periods of relative tolerance and bursts of hostility. Italy took over in 1911, and eventually the fascist government of Benito Mussolini issued discriminatory laws against Jews, dismissing some from government jobs and ordering them to work on Saturdays, the Jewish day of rest.

In the 1940s, thousands were sent to concentration camps in North Africa where hundreds died. Some were deported to concentration camps in Germany and Austria.

Their troubles didn't end with the war. Across the Arab world, anger about the Zionist project in Palestine turned Jewish neighbors into perceived enemies. In November 1945, mobs throughout Libya went on a three-day rampage, burning down Jewish shops and homes and killing at least 130 Jews, among them three dozen children.

After Israel was founded in 1948, it became a refuge for Jews of ancient Middle Eastern communities, including those of Libya. Barel's father fled in 1949, and her mother soon after. Most were gone by the time Gadhafi seized power in 1969. The new dictator expelled the rest, who were ordered to leave with one suitcase and a small amount of cash.

Jewish properties were confiscated. There was no way to determine how many. Debts to Jews were officially erased. Jewish cemeteries were turned into dumping grounds or built over, and most of the dozens of synagogues around the country were either demolished or put to different use. Some became mosques. A community that numbered about 37,000 at its peak vanished.

Inside Libya, the memory of Jews is fading. Elderly Muslim residents who remember their neighbors stay silent, worried they'll be accused of being Jewish sympathizers.

"There were Jews here once, but they left," said one Muslim resident of Tripoli's old Jewish quarter. He nervously shrugged when asked of their fate.

Still, the Libyan Jewish community left small legacies behind.

Their famous fish stew, known as hraimeh, is widely eaten in Libya today. Recently, a government official accompanying international reporters to a seafood restaurant in Tripoli called it "Jewish food" as he hungrily scooped it up. Muslims who defy their faith's ban on alcohol imbibe homemade bocha, a fig-based spirit once made by local Jews.

Today, Libyan Jews and their descendants number around 110,000. Most live in Israel, with others in Italy and elsewhere. None, if any, have any desire to return as residents, but Moussa Ibrahim, a spokesman for the embattled Gadhafi government, said they would be allowed back - if they first disavowed their Israeli citizenship. "They cannot have both," Ibrahim said.

The Benghazi-based rebel government would not comment on whether it had any intention of mending relations with the country's old Jewish community. Spokesman Jalal al-Gallal would say only that there would be "freedom of religion" in a future Libya.

Roumani, the Libyan Jewry expert, said he has a yearning to return, but knows that the places he knew are long gone.

Roumani described a memory of himself as a child in Benghazi: He is walking to synagogue with his father, listening to a chanted recitation of the Quran, the Muslim holy book, coming from a radio in a nearby cafe.

The synagogue is now a Coptic Christian church. His father's grave was lost when Gadhafi's regime built over the cemetery.

---

Associated Press writers Matti Friedman and Aron Heller in Jerusalem and Michelle Faul in Benghazi, Libya, contributed to this report.

---

Online:

http://diarna.org/index.htm

http://rluzon.com/

http://jimenaexperience.org/libya

Libyans chafe under Gadhafi's rule in Tripoli

FILE - In a June 7, 2011 file photo, a smoke and dust cloud from an explosion rises into the sky after a NATO airstrike in Tripoli, Libya. Anti-Gadhafi activists say they are emboldened by NATO strikes pounding the capital for the past two months in support of the insurgency. Photo: Abdel Meguid Al-Fergany / AP

Seattle Post - Libyans chafe under Gadhafi's rule in Tripoli

DIAA HADID, Associated Press

Published 02:31 p.m., Wednesday, June 15, 2011

TRIPOLI, Libya (AP) — The men labored in a sandy alley in the Libyan capital, trying to weld a rocket launcher to a jeep and brazenly talking about their goal: to battle Moammar Gadhafi's soldiers in the heart of his regime's stronghold.

"We want to use it for the battle," said one man, in his mid-20s and wearing tattered clothing as he measured sheets of metal. "This is an oppressive regime that is built on fear. It has to go."

Men like these are part of a loose band of activists emboldened by NATO airstrikes to take a stand in Tripoli, where repression of the opposition has been among the harshest in Libya.

Such low-level guerrilla warfare, along with small anti-government demonstrations, are part of a renewed push to shake the Gadhafi regime in its heartland despite a violent crackdown on dissent in the early weeks of the uprising that began Feb. 17.

Anti-Gadhafi activists say they are encouraged by the NATO strikes that have pounded the capital for the past two months in support of the insurgency. They cite gains made by other Libyan rebels, who pushed out Gadhafi forces from a series of mountain towns in the country's west in late May, and who appear to be slowly gaining ground outside their stronghold in the port city of Misrata, about 125 miles (200 kilometers) from Tripoli.

The numbers of anti-Gadhafi activists and their supporters are hard to gauge. Reporters are tightly controlled, and interviews must be done on the sly in quick snatches of conversation. All of the opposition activists who spoke to The Associated Press refused to be identified by name, fearing punishment by government officials.

For these activists, the only option is to take up arms against Gadhafi's forces.

"The time of protests is over. They shoot at the protesters," one man declared, speaking in the working-class neighborhood of Fashloom, which has become a center of resistance. He described a series of recent armed attacks against Gadhafi forces.

"It's only in this way that we will be rid of this regime," he said.

Still, Tripoli is unlikely to fall from within. Opposition, while active, is limited and vastly outgunned. Few of the rebel attacks appear to have been effective.

But resistance in the capital puts additional strain on Gadhafi, whose hold on power has been shaken by the 4-month-old rebel insurgency, 2½ months of NATO airstrikes and a naval blockade. Fuel, medicine and gasoline are scarce. Defections from the military and government have eaten away at the dictator's power base.

Gadhafi has much genuine support in Tripoli and elsewhere. An English-language teacher in a grocery shop accused Western journalists of underreporting the extent of NATO strikes. Another woman invited reporters to a lecture on Gadhafi's system of democracy and human rights, insisting there was freedom in her country. African workers in a Tripoli slum said Gadhafi's regime had given them jobs and stability.

Mixed among them were the angry opponents of Gadhafi's more than 40-year rule.

Soon after NATO conducted a sudden heavy bombing raid on Tripoli in late May, one medic in an upscale clinic described the rocking explosions as "good."

He said he hoped the strikes would urge rebels to march on Tripoli. He said his colleagues were sneaking medicine to rebels in the western mountain range, close to the Tunisian border.

His claims could not be verified, but the man appeared to take enormous risk to speak to reporters.

Five residents, interviewed separately, described several daring assaults against Gadhafi forces in late May and early June. The incidents were also reported by a prominent anti-Gadhafi activist.

They included what appeared to be an armed attack by rebels on an army base in Tripoli in late May.

A video uploaded to YouTube by an anti-regime activist purports to show the aftermath: Four badly wounded men who appeared to be rebels lay in pools of blood inside and outside a two-story house. At least one was dead.

Suggesting the fallen men had been involved in a violent attack on soldiers, a man, presumably a soldier, could be heard shouting: "They killed our people at dawn and we took our revenge by the morning. Rats! Dogs!"

A funeral procession on May 30 for one man killed in the attack turned into a demonstration by hundreds of residents in the neighborhood of Souk el-Juma, two residents said. A video of the anti-government protest was uploaded to YouTube.

"There is only one God, and Gadhafi is his enemy!" protesters shouted as they carried a man's body through the streets.

Days later, residents said an elderly man was killed by soldiers at a gas station in the middle-class neighborhood of Ben Ashour on June 2.

They said the man was killed by jittery soldiers who opened fire at residents fighting over places in a miles-long line for gasoline. A demonstration of several dozen people erupted after the shooting.

"It's not easy to see somebody fall like that, especially an old man," said a trader in Ben Ashour, who said he helps run a network of activists organizing peaceful protests.

___

On the Web:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?vgl9CjRhL-wk

Syrian blog hoaxer says sorry, but anger remains

Syrian blog hoaxer says sorry, but anger remains

JILL LAWLESS, Associated Press

Monday, June 13, 2011

LONDON (AP) — A 40-year-old American man living in Scotland said Monday he's sorry for posing as a Syrian lesbian blogger who offered vivid accounts of life amid revolt and repression in Damascus, a still-unraveling hoax that has exposed the difficulty of sifting truth from fiction online.

Tom MacMaster said he created the fictional persona of Amina Arraf and the "Gay Girl in Damascus" blog to draw attention to conditions in a Middle East convulsed by change.

"I never meant to hurt anyone," the Edinburgh University grad student wrote in a long apology on the blog. The university said it had suspended MacMaster's computer privileges while it investigated whether he had breached its rules.

And as the deceit unspooled, a second blogger known as Paula Brooks, who posted some of the fraudulent Arraf's comments on a lesbian news site, admitted to being a man who had adopted a fake lesbian persona.

The Washington Post reported late Monday that "Brooks" was a 58-year-old retired U.S. air force member named Bill Graber.

Graber admitted the deceit when phoned by the AP. He said he had set up the Lezgetreal.com site to advance the gay and lesbian cause and felt he would not be taken seriously as a straight man.

"LezGetReal was not meant to be deceitful or con anyone," he said.

He also claimed to have helped unmask MacMaster by tracking his posts to computer servers in Edinburgh.

"He would have got away with it if I hadn't been such a stand-up guy," Graber said.

Gay rights activists and bloggers say MacMaster's deceit has endangered real people who are trying to tell their stories in authoritarian societies.

"He completely stole the limelight of real LGBT bloggers and activists in the Middle East and diverted it in a negative way," said Dan Littauer of the website Gay Middle East.

Daniel Nassar, the pseudonym of a Syrian man affiliated with Gay Middle East, said MacMaster had put all gay Syrians in danger.

"If I was living in a country where I could sue this person because he has damaged me and damaged my cause ... then I would," he said.

The blogs about life as a Syrian-American lesbian grabbed international attention soon after they began in February. Alongside video clips and erotic poems, the writer wrote about a childhood in Virginia, daily life as a gay woman in Damascus, the growing protest movement and hopes for a future Syria freed from "dictators and rule by strong men."

For readers hungry for news of the uprisings sweeping the Arab world, it was gold dust — a gripping, firsthand account of a country from which most foreign journalists are excluded.

A reporter for The Associated Press, who maintained a monthlong email correspondence with someone claiming to be Arraf, found the persona persuasive. The writer spoke about friends in Damascus, and outlined worries about her father and hopes for the future of her country, and seemed very much like a woman in the midst of the violent change gripping Syria.

In the emails, the person acknowledged fudging some details to protect herself and her family, and painted a harrowing picture of fleeing her home.

An email sent to the blogger's address Monday was not immediately returned.

On June 6, a post on the Arraf site, ostensibly by a cousin, said she'd been abducted by armed men in a Damascus street. The Internet erupted with alarm. A "Free Amina Arraf" Facebook page drew 14,000 supporters. The U.S. State Department said it was making inquiries to establish her identity.

But other bloggers began to go public with their growing doubts about Arraf's authenticity.

Some thought an April 26 post describing how two plainclothes security agents came to her home to detain her and were persuaded to leaving by her father sounded extremely implausible. Syria's hardline security services are not known as being easily dissuaded.

Reporters in Virginia, where Arraf claimed to have grown up, could find no trace of her or her family.

Journalists could find no one who had ever met her — not even Sandra Bagaria, a Montreal woman who was having an online relationship with her and had exchanged hundreds of emails with "Amina."

Online sleuths — including Andy Carvin of National Public Radio and blogger Liz Henry — found that an IP address used by Arraf was based at Edinburgh University and uncovered links between the blogger and an address in Stone Mountain, Georgia owned by MacMaster, a married American man currently studying for a master's degree at the University of Edinburgh.

Then a woman in Britain, Jelena Lecic, came forward to say the photos of "Amina" on the blogger's Facebook page were actually of her. She had been unaware of the theft until she saw her own picture illustrating a British newspaper article about the blogger.

Faced with the mounting evidence, MacMaster first denied it, then confessed, posting an "apology to readers" Sunday on Amina's blog.

MacMaster's wife, Britta Froelicher, said she understood that people felt hurt and angry about what her husband had done. She said he was apologetic for a situation that "backfired" and became uncontrollable.

"He created kind of an avatar," she said. "When he became this other person, his opinions were being heard and it took on a life of its own.

"It was really an attempt to circumvent traditional news media and try to talk about things" from a fresh perspective, she said.

Froelicher, a doctoral student at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, spoke by telephone to the AP while on vacation with her husband in Istanbul.

She said she had known that her husband was writing a blog, but had no idea that he had created a false character.

"He's my husband, he's not my child," she said. "Obviously, we are going to have some conversations in private about these things."

Eve MacMaster, the Syria blogger's mother, said she hadn't spoken to her son since he admitted fabricating the posts but was certain his writings came from a genuine concern for people the Middle East.

"He's not out to make money or hurt anybody," she said. "I'm proud of him for caring about others and I'm proud of him for coming forward and saying 'I'm sorry. I was stupid and I was vain.'"

"He made some errors in judgment, but they weren't criminal or sinful," she said. "They were just poor judgment."

MacMaster insists he did not mean to hurt anyone — but his fake persona has left a trail of angry people.

Bagaria, Amina's Canadian online girlfriend, tweeted that she felt "deeply hurt."

Joe Stork, deputy director of the Middle East and North Africa division at Human Rights Watch, said the whole episode should serve as a warning to media and rights groups trying to cover the region's uprisings.

"It underscores the age-old principle that you have to know your sources," he said. "You have to know who is feeding you this information."

____

Ben McConville in Edinburgh, Christopher Torchia in Istanbul, Diaa Hadid in Beirut and Russ Bynum in Savannah, Georgia, contributed to this report.

Jill Lawless can be reached at http://twitter.com/JillLawless.

Libya rebels, Gadhafi forces clash in western city

Libya rebels, Gadhafi forces clash in western city

Posted on Friday, 06.10.11

By DIAA HADID and MAGGIE MICHAEL

Rebels were battling forces loyal to Moammar Gadhafi along the Mediterranean coast west of Tripoli on Saturday, fighting their way back into the important western oil port of Zawiya.

A Libyan rebel spokesman said it was the first major fighting in the city since government troops crushed opposition forces there in March.

Guma el-Gamaty, a London-based spokesman for the rebels' national council, says the opposition fighters were in control of a large area on the western side of the city.

A rebel fighter who fled Zawiya at the end of March said "there are clashes inside Zawiya itself."

The rebel, who identified himself only as Kamal, said "the fighters are back in the city" and that he had spoken with them.

Zawiya had been the closest city to the capital Tripoli to fall into rebel hands.

Apparently prompted by the Zawiya clashes, Libyan soldiers sealed off parts of a crucial coastal road leading from Tripoli, the capital, west to the Tunisian border. Zawiya sits about 30 miles (50 kilometers) west of Tripoli.

The coastal highway approaching Zawiya from the capital was clogged with soldiers and loyalist gunmen with assault rifles, some patrolling the road, others manning checkpoints. Roadside shops were shuttered. The only vehicles on the road were white jeep-style vehicles use by Gadhafi soldiers.

Civilian vehicles were directed onto a narrow agricultural road through olive groves and past grazing cattle and sprawling homes. Traffic on the agricultural rode crawled past Zawiya and was only allowed back on the coastal highway at historic Roman-era town of Sabrata 20 miles (30 kilometers) west of the fighting.

The coastal road is a chief artery from neighboring Tunisia for delivery for food, fuel and medicine for the Gadhafi regime that is under a naval blockade, NATO enforced no-fly strictures and continuing air strikes by the Western alliance in support of the rebel uprising.

Britain, meanwhile, reported on sorties flown by its air force on Friday, part of the NATO mission to protect civilians and help rebels who rose up against Gadhafi four months ago.

Maj. Gen. Nick Pope, top spokesman for the defense staff, said British jets destroyed four Gadhafi tanks hidden in an orchard southwest of Tripoli, the capital. The jets also dropped nine bunker-buster bombs on government military installations on the western outskirts of the capital.

Witnesses, however, reported seeing no NATO aircraft in the vicinity of the rebel-held port city of Misrata on Friday as Gadhafi forces shelled towns on the western outskirts of the city, 125 miles (210 kilometers) east of Tripoli.

A doctor at Hikma Hospital in Misrata, who would only give his first name, Ayman, said 31 rebels were killed in the Friday shelling by Gadhafi forces who opened fire with tanks, artillery and incendiary rockets.

They were pounding rebel forces in Dafniya, about 18 miles (30 kilometers) west of Misrata. He said at least 61 people were wounded in the attacks which began about 10 a.m. local time Friday and continue until late at night.

Gadhafi forces had renewed their shelling near Misrata on Wednesday. The city is one of the few footholds rebels have in western Libya and controls the country's largest port.

The doctor said residents had reported no sign of NATO aircraft in the Misrata region.

During the four-month upheaval, rebels have taken control of swaths of eastern Libya, although fighting has since come to a stalemate even with NATO support. Misrata remained one of the most important rebel footholds in the Gadhafi controlled west.

Government forces are surrounding Misrata on all sides but the north, where the city has access to the Mediterranean Sea for supplies and food through Libya's major port. Rebels have beaten back several government attempts to retake the city.

The Gadhafi forces are pushing back on rebel forces trying to break out of Misrata to advance on Tripoli.

A rebel fighter in Misrata who identifies himself only as Abdel-Salem said Gadhafi's sons, Khamis and al-Moatassem, and top aid Abdullah al-Senoussi are in command of the operation that is dug in at Zlitan, about nine miles (15 kilometers) from Dafniya.

"The situation is very bad there. Gadhafi sent huge forces to Zlitan to fortify the city because he knows that if Zlitan falls in the hands of the rebels, the way to Tripoli will be wide open," Abdel-Salam said. "Now the ball is in the court of NATO, but we have not seen any NATO planes flying over despite the fierce battle."

As more and more country's have sided with the rebels, Gadhafi has shown no sign of giving up power.

Turkey's prime minister said in a TV interview broadcast Friday that his country has offered Gadhafi guarantees if he were to leave Libya but has received no response. He did not detail what sort of guarantees.

"He has no other option but to leave Libya, with the condition that he is given certain guarantees. That's the picture," Recep Tayyip Erdogan said in the interview with the NTV channel.

"We have given him these guarantees; we said we will help you leave for wherever you would like."

Taboo-breaking women among Gadhafi's biggest fans

By DIAA HADID

Associated Press

The young woman police officer swaggers through a crumbling Tripoli slum, her dark hair cut boyishly short, an empty gun holster and walkie-talkie hanging from her police belt. A tattooed man with a cigarette dangling from his lips shrinks away.

He doesn't want to mess with 25-year-old Nisrine Mansour.

A member of the regime's vice squad, her hero is Libyan ruler Moammar Gadhafi. His image is on her cell phone, his face emerging from rays of green - the iconic regime color. Her ring tone is a tinny pro-Gadhafi chant.

Gadhafi has bestowed many titles upon himself during his 42-years of iron-fisted rule over Libya, branding himself "King of Kings" in Africa and "Brother Leader of the Revolution" in Libya.
Women like Mansour give him another title: emancipator of women.

"Moammar Gadhafi is the one who opened the opportunities for us to advance. That's why we cling to him, that's why we love him," says Mansour. "He gave us complete freedom as a woman to enter the police force, work as engineers, pilots, judges, lawyers. Anything."

Among Gadhafi's most ardent loyalists are a core of Libyan women who have risen to high-profile roles in the police, military and government and credit Gadhafi with giving them greater career avenues than many of their sisters elsewhere in the Arab world. They consider any threat to his regime a threat to their own advancement.

Even as Gadhafi's regime has cracked down brutally on dissent, locking up and torturing opponents, it has also long touted its policies of breaking cultural taboos concerning women's work and status in the deeply conservative nation. The most well known example is Gadhafi's personal guard of female bodyguards, but women have also been elevated to prominent positions in government ministries.

Gadhafi's policy was in part aimed at weakening traditional tribal and religious powers so he could impose his own vision of society.

It was only somewhat successful. Women who have gained prominence are a small minority in an otherwise strongly male-dominated Libya, far from the popular regime myth of a society filled with revolutionary fighting women. And, just as for men, advancement depends on total adherence to Gadhafi's authoritarian rule.

Women were also at the forefront of the protests that launched the anti-Gadhafi uprising in mid-February, demanding democracy for the country and - they hope - better rights for themselves. Still, while they have no rosy memories of their lives under Gadhafi, they say their struggle for equality is ongoing. Women activists were dismayed when the rebels appointed only one woman to the interim administration in their de facto capital of Benghazi.

"We are very disappointed," said Enas Al-Dursy, a 23-year-old activist. "We feel like we are being marginalized."

For policewoman Mansour, there is nothing a woman like herself can't aspire to in Gadhafi's Libya.

"I've never felt that I was treated differently because I'm a woman. Even when I'm picking up drunkards off the street, nobody ever said: 'She can't do that, she's a woman,'" said Mansour, who is charged with cracking down on drug addicts, drunkards and beggars in the slums of Tripoli.

A woman hugged her as she patrolled the garbage-strewn alleyways of the Hara Kabira slum in Tripoli's walled old city - once the pretty, brightly painted Jewish quarter, now a crumbling mess of homes filled with impoverished Libyans and African migrant workers. A little girl running by slapped Mansour's hand in greeting.

One man with a tatoo on his arm paused at the top of an alley.

"Troublemaker," Mansour said with a wink. He scurried away.

Throughout Gadhafi's Tripoli stronghold, female soldiers - a rare sight in most Arab countries - patrol roadside checkpoints in khaki uniforms and Muslim headscarves. They keep order at gas stations made rowdy by severe shortages that cause days-long lines. Police women sporting large sunglasses cruise by in cars.

Senior government officials in coifed hairstyles lunch at an upscale hotel where reporters stay in Tripoli. Gadhafi's daughter, Aisha, is a prominent lawyer.

Women are also involved in Gadhafi's mechanism of oppression against his opponents. Women run their own interrogation center for suspected female anti-Gadhafi activists, according to a resident who said she was hauled into one in May.

One of the most hated figures among the Libyan rebels seeking to overthrow Gadhafi is a woman - the former Gadhafi-appointed mayor of Benghazi, Huda Ben Amer, known as "the executioner." During a public hanging of a regime opponent in 1984, Ben Amer pulled down on the man's legs so he would die faster.

Early on, Gadhafi created a cadre of female bodyguards - glamorously made-up women in form-fitting military-style uniforms and high-heeled boots known as "amazons." He pointed to them as evidence of his commitment to promoting nontraditional roles for women.

Other hard-core supporters are known as Gadhafi's "nuns of the revolution," mostly women who came of age during the early years of Gadhafi's rule in the 1970s and devote themselves to his regime. Now in their 50s and 60s, many run ministerial departments.

About 27 percent of Libya's labor force were women in 2006 - low by world standards but high for the Arab world. Only Lebanon, Syria and Tunisia had higher rates, and the increase in women's participation in Libya over the past 20 years was by far the highest in the region, rising from 14 percent in 1986, according to the U.N.'s International Labor Organization.

"In part to boost its legitimacy, the regime promoted a more open, expansive, and inclusive role for women," said Ronald Bruce St John, who has written five books on Gadhafi's Libya.

Lisa Anderson, a Libya expert and president of the American University in Cairo, agreed, noting that when Gadhafi seized power in 1969, few women went to university. Now more than half of Libya's university students are women.

"One of the career paths that opened up for women in the past 30 years is the police, but general access to employment, education and the public sphere - as much as there is one for women - dramatically increased under Gadhafi," she said.

In her studio in an upscale Tripoli suburb, 25-year-old Radia al-Bodi, a television anchor for Libyan state TV, said women like herself would fight to defend Gadhafi's regime because of the promise it offered women.

"This is all because of Father Moammar," said Ibtisam Saadeddin, a 35-year-old soldier who wore gold-edged pins of a smiling Gadhafi on her khaki uniform and headscarf. "He is our air and sustenance. We can't be without him."

Associated Press writers Michelle Faul in Benghazi, Libya, and Ben Hubbard in Cairo contributed to this report.

Posted on Wed, Jun. 08, 2011 04:38 AM

Read more: http://www.kansascity.com/2011/06/08/2935208/taboo-breaking-women-among-gadhafis.html#ixzz1PF8Y0i00

NATO unleashes blistering airstrikes in Libya

NATO unleashes blistering airstrikes in Libya 

By: DIAA HADID 06/07/11 2:14 AM
Associated Press

Moammar Gadhafi stood defiant Tuesday in the face of the heaviest and most punishing NATO airstrikes yet — at least 40 thunderous daylight attacks that sent plumes of smoke billowing above the Libyan leader's central Tripoli compound.

In late afternoon and as the strikes continued, Libyan state television broadcast an audio address from Gadhafi, who denounced NATO and the rebels challenging his rule. He vowed never to surrender.

"We will not kneel!" he shouted.

Alliance officials have warned for days they were increasing the scope and intensity of their air campaign to oust Gadhafi after more than 40 years in power. NATO is backing the rebel insurgency, which has seized swaths of eastern Libya and pockets in the regime's stronghold in the west since it began in February, inspired by uprisings elsewhere in the Arab world.

Some 6,850 people, nearly all of them Libyans, have streamed across the border from Libya to Tunisia since Monday to flee the NATO raids as well as fighting between the rebels and government forces, according to the Tunisian Defense Ministry.

It couldn't be confirmed whether Gadhafi's some 10-minute speech was a live phone call or an audio recording, but it appeared to take state television by surprise. The sound was hastily adjusted to make it louder

"We will not surrender: we only have one choice — to the end! Death, victory, it does not matter, we are not surrendering!" Gadhafi said. Highlighting his anger, he called the rebels "bastards."

As he spoke, reporters in Tripoli heard the whooshing sound of low-flying military craft again, followed by several explosions. Pro-Gadhafi loyalists also fired celebratory gunfire in the air.

Gadhafi was last seen in a brief appearance on state television in late May. He has mostly been in hiding since NATO strikes in April targeted one of his homes. Libyan officials said one of his sons, Saif al-Arab, and three of his grandchildren were killed in that strike.

Western reporters and a senior Libyan government official said the pounding airstrikes Tuesday easily outstripped the number of bombing runs on any day since the international air campaign began in mid-March.

Libyan government spokesman Moussa Ibrahim claimed some 30 people were killed in 60 NATO strikes on Tripoli. Previous government tolls have proven to be exaggerated, and reporters, who face tight restrictions in the Libyan capital, saw only one dead man during a visit to Gadhafi's Bab al-Aziziya compound.

The dust-covered bloodied man was draped around a cement column at one of the crushed compound buildings. He was seen on a government-escorted tour of bombed sites.

The boot and legs of the man, identified as Misbah Hussein, in his forties, stuck out from beneath a pile of twisted metal close to the remains of a building just inside the eastern entrance of the Gadhafi compound.

As his comrades realized what they were staring at, they rushed toward him, their arms raised.

"Bring a blanket!" one shouted.

They wrapped him in the closest thing they could find — a large green flag — green being the iconic color of the Gadhafi regime.

A soldier said eight strikes targeted the building, which he said was a guest house for visiting dignitaries.

Around him, one building was smashed into three hulking cement parts and the floor was strewn with small chunks of metal, foam and cement.

He said some two dozen soldiers and civilians were sitting near the building when it was hit. He would not be named, citing military regulations.

A strike smashed another nearby building that officials identified as a guest house. The ground was littered with small gray shards.

That was not far from a zone where pro-Gadhafi supporters have camped in tents for the past few weeks to act as human shields against NATO strikes.

NATO issued no immediate comment on battering it delivered over Tripoli.

Gadhafi's inner circle has been shaken by a wave of defections. A Libyan rebel diplomat in Geneva said Tuesday that the country's labor minister Al-Amin Manfour — who had been representing Libya at the International Labor Organization's annual meeting — has defected and joined the rebels.

Adel Shaltut said Tuesday that Manfour was on his way to the rebel stronghold of Benghazi, in eastern Libya. Shaltut and other diplomats at Libya's mission to the United Nations in Geneva defected to the rebels in February.

Russia, meanwhile, was renewing diplomatic efforts to end the civil war.

Mikhail Margelov, the Kremlin's special representative for Africa, said Gadhafi had lost his legitimacy but that NATO airstrikes were not a solution to the stalemate in Libya.

"As long as bloodshed continues the more difficult it will be to build a national reconciliation process after the civil war," Margelov told reporters Tuesday during a visit to the eastern rebel stronghold of Benghazi.

Margelov left Benghazi for Cairo, the Interfax news agency reported, adding that the rebels said they supported Russia's mediation with Tripoli. The envoy did not, however, have plans to go to Tripoli.

Russia, along with China, abstained in the U.N. Security Council vote authorizing the use of force against Libyan government loyalists and has repeatedly criticized the NATO bombing campaign in support of the rebels.

U.N. envoy Abdul-Elah al-Khatib was expected in Tripoli. And Libya dispatched Foreign Minister Abdul-Ati al-Obeidi to Beijing for a three days of talks, an apparent effort to restore some of Libyan government influence and defuse a setback delivered by China last week. Chinese officials announced on Friday that they had reached out to the rebel forces challenging Gadhafi, a significant effort to boost Chinese engagement in the Libya conflict and possibly jostle for a mediator role.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei told reporters at a regular briefing Tuesday that talks with al-Obeidi would focus on the need for a political solution to the Libyan crisis.

The revolt against Gadhafi followed popular uprisings that overturned the longtime rulers of Tunisia and Egypt. As the conflict escalated, it grew beyond an insurrection by a small group and has now evolved into a civil war.

The refugees, who were mainly Libyan but also included Egyptians, Sudanese and Nigerians, crossed at the Ras Djedir and Dhehiba border points, then were transferred to a camp in the border area of Tataouine set up by the United Arab Emirates, Tunisia's Defense Ministry said.

___

Associated Press Writer Hadeel Al-Shalchi in Benghazi, Gillian Wong in Beijing and Frank Jordans in Geneva contributed to this report.

Read more at the San Francisco Examiner: http://www.sfexaminer.com/news/2011/06/rare-daytime-nato-airstrikes-hit-libyan-capital#ixzz1Ocwb42kw

--
Diaa Hadid
Correspondent
The Associated Press
dhadid@ap.org
diaa_hadid2@yahoo.co.uk
Please send releases to both addresses

Libya claims on NATO strikes can be absurd

Seattle Times - Libya claims on NATO strikes can be absurd

By DIAA HADID

Associated Press
TRIPOLI, Libya —

The small note in curly handwriting was quietly passed by a medic to a foreign reporter in a Tripoli hospital.

Its hastily scrawled contents suggested that Libyan officials were lying when they said a baby girl was wounded in a NATO attack. Government officials had bused reporters to the Tripoli Central Hospital to see the baby, whom they identified as Haneen.

She lay on a stark hospital cot, with colorful tubes attached to her body. Her foot was bandaged.

"This is a case of road traffic accident," the medic's note read.

"This is the trouth," said the last line, the word misspelled.

That small scrap of paper underlines the absurdity confronting reporters who try to cover Moammar Gadhafi's regime in Tripoli, the Libyan capital.

It appears that officials exaggerate the scope of and casualties from two months of NATO air strikes that have targeted sites critical to Gadhafi. Regime officials try to prove that alliance strikes, instead of protecting Libyan civilians, is doing them harm.

Those thundering NATO strikes do sometimes kill and wound civilians. They do cause damage to homes, hospitals and roads.

But some government officials appear determined, understandably, to exagerate the damage done and casualties caused.

Government officials said the baby girl was injured in a NATO strike on a target near her house on the outskirts of Tripoli early Sunday.

A Libyan official identified one man who spoke to reporters as the child's neighbor. As he spoke to reporters, the Libyan official nudged him to condemn NATO.

A woman who was identified as her mother was led by a Libyan official to stand beside the baby. Photographers snapped photos.

And then a medic quitely dropped the note. A reporter covered it with his foot and read it only later, when government officials weren't looking.

Reporters in Tripoli have agreed not to photograph the note, identify the medic's specific job or the medic's gender. They fear the care-giver would face harsh retribution if identified. The note is in the possession of a foreign reporter who is allowing other journalists to see it.

It was scrawled in blue ink on the back of a doctor's diagnosis form.

The medic disappeared into a crowd of hospital staff before reporters could ask questions.

Hours later, reporters were shipped to another site where officials said a NATO strike targeted a farm house on Tripoli's outskirts.

An unexploded, rusting bomb lay between the palms and olive trees on the farm.

"The women ran away screaming and the children lay on the floor," said the farm owner Mohammed al-Najeh. The 50-year-old said he and his family were sitting in the garden when the bomb landed on Sunday evening.

The farmer's young son nodded solemnly, clutching a large green flag - the color of the Libyan regime.

But what appeared to be Cyrillic script used by the Russians could be seen on the back of the barrel-shaped explosive.

Russia, of course, is not part of NATO. But it has been an arms supplier to Libya in the past.

When questioned about the Russian script, reporters were offered a different story.

"The NATO strike hit a missile depot about a kilometer (about half a mile) away," said one man.

"The missiles flew in the air, and one of them landed here," the man said.

It was the same man who was initially identified as the baby girl's neighbor earlier in the day. When pressed by reporters, he identified himself as a government official called Emad Ghaith.

Libya's deputy foreign minister said it was not government policy to make up stories for the foreign press.

"The government message is credible. I am sure if there is a mistake, its not from government sources," said Khaled Kaim at a press briefing at a bombed-out building on Monday.

He said Libyan residents wanting to emphasize how they are suffering under NATO attacks might be be exaggerating.

"It is from people who are enthusiastic, and they want to show journalists that there is injustice and targeting of civilians," he said.

Tripoli's women-only gas pump highlights shortages

Tripoli's women-only gas pump highlights shortages

By DIAA HADID, Associated Press

Wednesday, June 1, 2011

Weary and frustrated, the women had been lined up for days in their dust-covered cars waiting to fill up at Tripoli's women-only gas station. A scowling female soldier kept order with the help of a few dozen male volunteers.

The men, in groups of two or three, pushed cars with their tanks on empty as the line snaked slowly forward.

"Push! Push!" one man grunted as a woman sporting large black sunglasses sat behind the wheel and steered her gray sedan. Behind her, a line stretched for miles as women sat numbly in their vehicles, their children playing in the street outside the cars.

The men, some wearing postcard-sized portraits of Moammar Gadhafi around their necks, slowly propelled the woman's car to a gas pump. There, a man stamped her fuel ration book, allowing her to buy government-subsidized fuel for a few cents a gallon.

A 35-year-old khaki-clad soldier, Ibtisam Saadeddin, occasionally barked orders. A heavyset woman in a green Muslim headscarf — the iconic Gadhafi regime color — she wore a Gadhafi pin on her uniform and another above her forehead, pinned to her headscarf.

"He is the crown of my head," Saadeddin declared proudly, her heavily made-up face beaming.

The scene at the Gurji Women's Gas Station highlights the sharp shortages faced by Libyans throughout the areas ruled by Gadhafi's regime, where fuel, medicine, some food and commercial goods are scarce and streets filled with idle cars resemble parking lots.

They also show how a can-do spirit in this chaotically run country is helping residents get by.

The country is roughly divided between Gadhafi's rule in his Tripoli stronghold in the west and the rebel's bastion of Benghazi and a smattering of other towns in the east. The rebels are aided by NATO airstrikes, but fighting is at a stalemate.

The warfare has limited the oil-rich nation's ability to refine its own fuel. NATO-allied ships divert fuel tankers, and supply routes are often disrupted. Foreign workers have fled the violence, paralyzing industry. And with banks limiting withdrawals to a few hundred dollars a month, residents are short of cash.

The gas station on Tripoli's main Gurji road has always been just for women, said Sarhan al-Hashm, taking a break from pushing cars.

The gender-segregated station is an oddity in a country where Gadhafi's mix of personality cult and authoritarian, socialist-style rule has pushed women to break cultural taboos, even as it savagely prevents other freedoms. Unlike their sisters in other Arab countries, women in Libya serve in the military and police force, and sometimes occupy high-ranking positions in the Libyan government.

Still, having a gas station just for them has been a blessing, the women told The Associated Press during a government-sponsored visit over the weekend. Other gas stations are mostly frequented by men whose tempers flare over the long wait and soldiers frequently fire their weapons in the air to break up fights.

And while the lines are long here, they're among the shortest in the city. Other gas lines stretch over bridges, around overpasses, clogging up main arteries as far as the eye can see.

"I've waited four days for fuel. It's so tiring," said Sana Njeim, a 26-year-old computer student. She said her life revolved around gas lines. She leaves only to go to class, eat and sleep, leaving her car in neutral so the men can roll it forward.

It wasn't just the fuel, the young woman said.

"The price of food — it's on fire. Meat. Vegetables. It's all expensive," she said.

Her words were borne out by a series of visits to markets. Fish — a staple food here — has shot up in price and is scarce because there isn't fuel for boats. And many fishermen — who mostly were Egyptians — fled the violence weeks ago. An upscale supermarket sold scattered chunks of veal and camel meat.

As Njeim spoke, indignant Gadhafi loyalists surrounded her vehicle.

One man demanded she only say "nice" things about Libya. Another shoved a picture of Gadhafi on her rearview mirror. "Tell her you love the leader!" he barked.

The interview was cut short after another man ordered Njeim to stop speaking.

"You journalists all lie!" screamed Saadeddin, the female soldier, her round face registering her fury.

She stood before the gas pumps, pumping her fists and shouting pro-Gadhafi chants as two dozen soldiers and Gadhafi loyalists rushed to her side.

"Gas doesn't matter. We want our leader!" they chanted.

None of the women waiting in cars joined in.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2011/06/01/international/i233048D63.DTL#ixzz1O79WbgO8