THE DOMINO EFFECT IN THE MIDDLE EAST

@iyad_elbaghdadi

In Misurata, 17 dead and 27 critically injured only today. #Libya
5 minutes ago via web

@iyad_elbaghdadi
Reports that four east Europeans captured in Misurata; were fighting for Gaddafi. #Libya
6 minutes ago via web

@iyad_elbaghdadi

Many signs from the battlefield in #Libya point to Gaddafi having received new & advanced weapons recently. Possible source?

GADDAFI FORCES ATTACK TOWN, SOME FLEE TO CAVES
Reuters
March 22, 2011, 9:31 am

RABAT (Reuters) - The western Libyan town of Zintan faced heavy shelling from forces loyal to Muammar Gaddafi on Monday, two witnesses said, forcing residents to flee, including to caves in the mountainous region.

"Several houses have been destroyed and a mosque minaret was also brought down," Abdulrahmane Daw told Reuters by phone from the town. "New forces were sent today to besiege the city. There are now at least 40 tanks at the foothills of the mountains near Zintan."

Swiss journalist Gaetan Vannay, also reached by telephone, said the shelling was the heaviest in three days. "Today this very strong battle started on the eastern front. Women and children hid in the caves in the forests."

Daw said poorly equipped anti-government forces had managed to keep pro Gaddafi forces from entering the town about 90 miles southwest of the capital Tripoli.

"The city has been under attack since Friday after government forces entered from eastern Shguiga area but they retreated," he said of a nearby hamlet. "On Saturday they bombed and shelled us with heavy machine guns and tanks."

"Today as of 10 a.m. or 10:30 a.m. they have been using explosives and tanks."

He added that the local hospital was poorly equipped and called on international forces to intervene in the area.

Vannay, on assignment for Radio Television Suisse, described a fierce battle on Saturday which Gaddafi forces lost on the southern front, followed by a quieter Sunday.

"There is literally nobody in the city," he said. "The civilians including the youths are the ones defending the city. Many have been lightly wounded and today there were two dead, but those were fighters. There are dead among the Gaddafi forces as well."

"The Gaddafi firepower is way superior to the rebels'."

(Reporting by Souhail Karam, writing by Adam Tanner)

Libya: No water, food or power – and still the rebels resist regime's attacks
In Ajdabiya, a city under siege where loyalists are launching indiscriminate strikes, Kim Sengupta witnesses a dirty war

Tuesday, 22 March 2011

AFP/GETTY
Libyan rebels carry an injured comrade following a failed attempt to take the town of Ajdabiya


A city besieged and battered, those of its people who remain living without food, water or power for days and facing daily attacks: that was Ajdabiya yesterday as Muammar Gaddafi's forces fought to retain their hold on this strategic gateway to the east of Libya.

Despite the destruction of the regime's tanks and artillery by pulverizing Western air strikes and the terrified retreat of its troops, the rebels, not for the first time in this war, failed to press home their advantage and retake the city. Instead, they had fled in abject panic at the first sign of a counter-attack.

There is, however, a resilient resistance inside Ajdabiya, and its members guided me through desert tracks into the areas they had wrested back by battling the enemy day after day. Why, these fighters wondered, had the protest movement's leadership in Benghazi failed to tap into local knowledge and use these routes to come to their aid and outflank the regime's troops.

The desert roads had also been used by the desperate residents of the city to escape. Only a quarter of the population of 135,000 are now left inside. The empty streets reverberate with the sound of explosions, and every shop is shuttered; the hospital is still dealing with casualties, but its dwindling medical supplies cannot cope with any of the serious cases who have had to be moved out by ambulances often risking crossfire.

Although the revolutionary fighters, the Shabaab, have fought their way to control of the centre and some of the suburbs, there is still a near-constant threat from Gaddafi's soldiers. My Libyan interpreter and I had to repeatedly move through side roads and alleyways as fresh salvoes of rocket-propelled grenades and Kalashnikov fire came from different directions.

Much of the shooting took place with careless disregard for who was at the receiving end. "Look what they had done," said Hamza Zwas, a 26-year-old militant, pointing at a large hole on the side of a house which had just been hit by a mortar round. "That is the way they have fired, we have had people killed, injured, because they don't care about what they do. People are frightened and that is why they left."

The house which had been hit was empty, the owners leaving last week. The 18-year-old son of the family next door, Selim Ansabi, died three days ago when a car on the high street was hit by an artillery shell. "He was a passenger, his friend was driving. He lost his arm," said Selim's father, Abdullah, shaking his head. "Neither of the boys were Shabaab, they were not fighting, why did they use something so bad in the middle of our city? They must have known that people will be killed, they will be hurt."

Some of the killings had been targeted from lists supplied by informers, local people claimed. Shawad Mohammed was shot in the front of his home; Jadullah Bakhti was taken away, his body dumped on a stretch of waste-ground two days later. Naji Yunis Ali did not wait for the secret policemen accompanying the soldiers to come for him and fled with his family.

"So they damaged the place, they were angry, they came with a big metal [armoured] car and knocked down the wall, then they came inside and smashed everything," said Mr Ali's cousin Mukhtar Issa. "They had a picture of Naji. They said even if he had run away to Benghazi they will catch him and hang him. This could have happened to many of us, we are very afraid."

It is, however, not just the local population that has reasons to be deeply afraid. In a back room on the ground floor of a house nearby are three prisoners taken by the rebels. Two of them, from Chad, are allegedly mercenaries, among a group Gaddafi is accused of recruiting from sub-Saharan Africa. The third, a man in his 60s, claims to be Libyan, but his captors say they are convinced that he is Tunisian.

The detainees are brought out from behind a heavy door, bolted from the outside with a metal bar. They all look frightened. The oldest one bursts into tears. The man, who says his name is Milud Miukhtar, pleads between sobs that he is poor and had been sleeping rough since he had arrived in the city a little while ago. "They arrested me because I was a stranger, they are very suspicious of outsiders. They did this to my hands," he said, raising swollen wrists and fingers. "How can they think I am in the army, I am too old to fight. What will happen to me, will they kill me, do you think, sir?"

The local commander, Captain Adil Zwei, hugs Mr Mukhtar and reassures that no one will harm him. "His hands were damaged when he was first detained, my men are not responsible. We shall protect all of them, but it is a problem," said the captain. "The people around here are very angry, we cannot tell them where we are holding these men."

The two men from Chad, Asil Hussein Baqua and Hussein Abdulrahab al-Hussein, say they were working in Tripoli when officials told them that they must go to fight 'terrorists'. In return for their service they were offered money, a flat each and Libyan citizenship.

Mr Baqua, 38, who said he had been in Libya for eight years and worked in a ceramics factory, said: "What choice did we have? The police would have put us in prison if we refused. We were told that we would only be used on checkpoint duties, that is all." Mr al-Hussein, 27 and unemployed, added "I have lived in Libya for three years, I have nothing against the revolution. I am really sorry I got involved in this."

Both the men were bandaged, results of injuries they received, they said, when the truck they were in was hit in an air-strike on Sunday. Captain Zwei was anxious to hand his prisoners over to the rebel authorities. "This will happen when the officials from Benghazi get here" he said. "But I do not know when that is going to be. We thought it was going to be today after all the bombings by the foreign powers. We are going in and out of here, we can show them."

Col Gaddafi's forces were in control of the west and east entrances to Ajdabiya when we left, firing shells into the city at people he had repeatedly stressed loved him, and who he loved. "There had not been any big bombings today, we are worried the foreigners will not maintain it," said the fighter Hamza Zwas, rubbing his shoulder beneath an Abercrombie&Fitch T-shirt. He had been struck by a bullet in the early days of the uprising, but returned to the fray after surgery in Egypt. "But we have been fighting for some time now, and we will continue," he said.

On the way out we met 37-year-old Abu-Gadi Mohammed. His family were camped out in the countryside to get away from the violence. His wife, Zahiya, has been forced to give birth there. "I was very worried and upset that she had to go through this hardship," he said. "But she is alright and I have now got a little daughter who is healthy. I shall call her Amal." – hope.

Clinton: Gaddafi, allies may be seeking way out: report

WASHINGTON | Tue Mar 22, 2011 6:39pm EDT
(Reuters) - Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi and his allies, facing a bombing campaign by Western nations, may be exploring exile options, although it is unclear if he would seriously contemplate stepping aside, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Tuesday.

"Some of it is theater," Clinton told ABC News in an interview, saying the United States was aware of people reaching out "allegedly on Gaddafi's behalf" to try to assess their options.

"A lot of it is just the way he behaves. It's somewhat unpredictable," she said. "But some of it, we think, is exploring. You know, what are my options, where could I go, what could I do. And we would encourage that."

The Western states enforcing a no-fly zone over Libya to protect civilians agreed on Tuesday to use NATO to drive the military effort, but officials said the divided alliance was far from agreeing the details of the mission.

Gaddafi, in his first appearance since the air campaign began, vowed to fight on. "We will be victorious in the end," he told crowds at his Tripoli compound who have volunteered to be human shields in a speech carried live television.

Clinton also said the U.S. government had received unconfirmed reports that at least one of Gaddafi's sons may have been killed in the coalition air strikes. She said the "evidence is not sufficient" to confirm the reports, but added it was not U.S. forces that would have killed him.

Clinton said details on who will assume leadership of the coalition were still being worked. She said she was not worried about the transition.

"NATO will be definitely involved because we do have a lot of NATO members who are committed to this process. And, you know, they want to see command and control that is organized," she said. "But I'm very relaxed about it ... I think it is proceeding. It's moving forward in the right direction and we will have what we need in the next few days."

(reporting by Andrew Quinn; editing by Philip Barbara)

@arwaCNN

Gen younis says needs weapons & equipment, still getting hammered by tanks & artillery from positions cant hit by air bc 2 close 2 civilians
19 minutes ago via web

gen younis comments prior to gadhafi's speech...
25 minutes ago via web

gen younis also says he believes gadhafi will fight 2 the end & has heard reports that he's hiding in bunker complex in south he had built
30 minutes ago via web

Intv'd gen younis, former #libya interior min & now commanding opposition forces, says is in direct contact w/allies 2 coord air strikes
32 minutes ago via web

@OnlyOneLibya

China/Russia/India if u disagree with UN intervention while Gaddafi massacres Libyans,what do u propose doing?What is ur answer?4 us to die?

2:15pm
More on that shooting at the clinic in rebel-held Misurata. A resident named Saadoun told the agency:

It started half an hour ago. The snipers are ... shooting at the hospital and its two entrances are under heavy attack. No one can get in or out ... We have lost all communication with people inside. The last thing we knew is that three are killed and three are critically wounded.