Syria, Libya, Egypt and Middle East unrest – live updates

• Tripoli denies Khamis Gaddafi has been killed • Libyan rebels’ attempt to take Zlitan stalls • Syria: ’109 killed’ in Hama yesterday •  Hillary Clinton says 2,000 have died since uprising began • Live coverage throughout the day 12.24pm: The Tripoli government has described rebel reports that Khamis Gaddafi, the dictator’s son, is dead, as a “dirty trick”. 12.22pm: Breaking: Tripoli has denied Khamis Gaddafi was killed last night. 12.19pm: Nato has said its airstrikes last night in Zlitan, Libya , hit an ammunition depot and military police facility. The rebels say Nato hit a government operations centre and killed Khamis Gaddafi, the Libyan leader’s son. Two of Muammar Gaddafi’s other sons, Mutassim and al-Saadi, also head military brigades. The Associated Press notes of Khamis: In February, eight days before the Libyan uprising began, Khamis Gaddafi was given a VIP tour of the Air Force Academy in Colorado during a US tour. After he returned home, he led forces loyal to his father in an assault on the rebel-held city of Zawiya, where civilian protests against his father were crushed. 12.16pm: Another powerful component of Hosni Mubarak’s dictatorship appears to have crumbled, following the formal dissolution of Egypt ‘s national federation of trade unions, reports Jack Shenker from Cairo. 12.04pm: Reuters has a quote from a Libyan rebel spokesman on the rebels’ claims Khamis Gaddafi has been killed: We have information that in Zlitan, a leadership building was attacked by Nato and 32 Gaddafi men were killed, among them his son, Khamis. Arab media reported in March that Khamis had died in a kamikaze crash by a disaffected Libyan air force pilot. Libyan state television showed footage at the time of a man resembling Khamis, which it said disproved reports of his death. 11.58am: Turkey intercepted an arms shipment from Iran to Syria two and a half months ago, Turkish newspaper Today’s Zaman is reporting. 11.53am: A resident of Hama, Syria , has told the Associated Press news agency that tanks started bombing the city at 4am this morning. “If people get wounded, it is almost impossible to take them to hospital,” the resident, who did not want his name used, said by telephone. He added that the city was also bombed at sunset last night as people were breaking their dawn-to-dusk fast, which Muslims observe during the holy month of Ramadan. The US has imposed sanctions on a prominent pro-Assad businessman and his firm: Muhammad Hamsho and Hamsho International Group. 11.47am: This video from CBS news shows scenes from the attacks on Hama over the last few days, with tanks in the city and people being hit by gunfire. It also revisits comments from the US ambassador to Syria, Robert Ford, who visited Hama last month, comments particularly relevant given Syrian state TV’s apparent claims that troops are in Hama to respond to armed rebellion . Ford said: The Syrian government is saying there are armed groups in Hama. I went there. I didn’t see a single gun. The most dangerous weapon I saw was a slingshot. 11.38am: The Nato airstrike reported to have killed Khamis Gaddafi was on a government operations centre in Zlitan, Libyan rebel spokesman Mohammad al-Rajali has said. Nato said there had been bombing around Zlitan yesterday but a spokesman in Brussels could not verify the report. 11.31am: Syrian state TV has broadcast new images from inside Hama, the BBC is reporting. The pictures reportedly show rubble-strewn streets and wrecked buildings. State TV is claiming Syrian troops were responding to an armed rebellion in the city. This does not tally with what residents and activists have been saying. The government has made such claims before about attacks on other parts of Syria, such as Jisr al-Shughour, in the north-west. The BBC reports : The Syrian TV report showed pictures of armed men hiding behind cars … The report showed deserted streets with flimsy barricades and piles of rubble. Later, the reporter went into buildings that appeared to have been destroyed in an explosion. 11.22am: Jack Shenker writes from Cairo, where it is quiet this morning as the first Friday prayers of Ramadan ring out across the city. But all eyes will be on Tahrir Square this afternoon, he says, as some protesters plan to return to the square despite their violent eviction by soldiers on Monday. Tahrir is currently packed out with central security trucks and troops, who have been effectively conducting their own “sit-in” for the past few days to prevent demonstrators re-taking the plaza, where they gathered daily during the uprising that toppled Hosni Mubarak in February. The authorities are clearly taking no chances, but things could come to a head at sundown, when there is a planned iftar (breakfast – ending the day’s fasting) in the square. Meanwhile Vodafone Egypt’s year keeps going from bad to worse. After they and other mobile companies shut down their networks at the height of the anti-Mubarak uprising back in January, they’ve made a steady series of PR blunders since; a video by their advertising agency appearing to credit Vodafone with the revolution caused a big backlash in Egypt, and at Mubarak’s trial this week, lawyers for the families of those killed during the unrest implicated Vodafone and other communications firms in their case. Now Vodafone has launched a new advertising campaign based around the Twitter hashtag #VodafoneShokran (Vodafone Thank You). Unsurprisingly it’s somewhat backfired, with the hashtag now flooded with anti-Vodafone messages such as “‘#VodafoneShokran – Thanks for claiming you inspired the revolution when in fact you caused the death of martyrs by cutting off communication”. As part of the campaign Vodafone vowed to retweet all messages with the #VodafoneShokran hash tag, but strangely they’ve been reluctant to see through on that promise. You can see a selection of the tweets (in English and Arabic) here . 11.21am: A Swiss reporter has been telling al-Jazeera about his visit to Hama, Syria , where he saw the bodies of people shot in the head – “targeted shootings”, he said. Another reporter across the border from the southern Syrian town of Deraa, in Jordan, said people there feel sure the Assad regime is going to fall soon. They are preparing for massive demonstrations there today after Friday prayers, the first such prayers since the beginning of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan. 11.14am: Dmitry Medvedev, the Russian president, has been speaking today about the situation in Syria. He said of Bashar al-Assad, his Syrian counterpart: He needs to urgently carry out reforms … or face a sad fate … The situation is changing and our direction is changing too. Russia, along with China, is seen as being a block on any more serious action being taken against Syria by the UN security council. Like the UK, the US and France, Russia and China have a veto on the council. 11.13am: Al-Jazeera is reporting scepticism about the reported death of Khamis Gaddafi in Libya . Their reporter compared the Libyan government’s loud response to the death of Saif al-Arab Gaddafi in April with its silence today. 11.05am: My colleague Nour Ali (a pseudonym) sends these YouTube videos of protests in Syria yesterday. A sit-in protest in Medan, Damascus . The crowd are chanting: “Bashar step down … We want to fast and to celebrate.” The funeral of Khaled Alfakhani became a demonstration at Abd Alkareem Alrfaee mosque in Kafrsooseh, Damascus. This video shows the scene inside the mosque while security forces surrounded it. This video shows protests at the Shami mosque in the Zahraa neighbourhood of Aleppo, while at a huge demonstration in Idlib the people chant “The people and the army are one hand.” The caption reads: “Men maintain order as demonstrators protest peacefully in Idlib for Ramadan.” The police do not seem to be confronting the protesters. In Deir Ezzor, where tanks are surrounding the city, another demonstration took place . It is impossible to properly verify these videos. 10.43am: Nato has responded to claims by pro-Gaddafi officials yesterday that two children were killed in an airstrike on Zlitan yesterday. An official at Nato operational HQ in Naples said: We did hit a military target at around 6.30 [yesterday] morning and it was a command-and-control site. We always take seriously allegations of civilian casualties and are looking into it, but we have no evidence at this stage that this was caused by an air strike. 10.40am: A resident of the besieged Syrian city of Hama says troops have shelled several neighbourhoods overnight and are preventing food supplies from entering residential areas. The man told the Associated Press the attacks started at dawn and that he saw 20 tanks in the central Assi square. He asked that his name not be used for fear of reprisals. The latest shelling comes as Syrians prepare for mass protests after the first Friday prayers in Ramadan. 9.47am: Hello and welcome to Middle East Live. Here are the headlines so far. Libya A rebel spokesman said today that a Nato air attack in Zlitan has killed Muammar Gaddafi’s son Khamis (left), one of the main commanders of the Libyan leader’s military forces. Another 31 people were also killed, the spokesman said. A Nato official at operations headquarters in Naples said he was aware of the report but could not confirm it. There was no immediate comment from the Tripoli government. There have been claims Khamis had been killed before, in March . If confirmed, the death of Khamis would be a severe blow to Gaddafi both in terms of morale and military leadership. Khamis is head of the 32nd brigade, one of the Libyan army’s most professional and loyal units, according to Reuters. Gaddafi’s government announced earlier this year that his son Saif al-Arab Gaddafi (not to be confused with Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, in the news yesterday claiming to have made a pact with Islamists ) had been killed. Saif al-Arab had a much lower profile than either of his brothers and no major leadership role. Rebels have been trying for weeks to take Zlitan, 100 miles (160km) east of Tripoli, which would open the coastal road towards the capital. Chris Stephen writes from Misrata that rebel commanders said last night that the attempt to capture Zlitan had stalled. A second offensive on the eastern front, this one against the key oil town of Brega, has also become bogged down well short of its objective, Chris writes. The rebels broke into Zlitan over the weekend, only to find that most of the population did not want to be liberated. Zlitan’s leaders are apparently frightened that if the town is liberated, government artillery will be directed at them, and rebel leaders say a conventional attack on the city will cause civilian casualties. Misrata’s leaders are now negotiating with Zlitan’s elders, trying to encourage a change-of-mind. “It’s not that much of a problem to capture Zlitan,” said rebel fighter Mohammed Elfituri. “The problem is the families won’t let us pass.” These failures will leave some wondering whether the rebels, even with concentrated Nato air support, can take ground against their better-equipped foe. Syria There were reports that 109 people were killed yesterday in Hama as the Syrian government continued its crackdown against protesters in the town. One resident said around 250 people have been killed since Sunday. Activist group Avaaz said many bodies had been shot at close range and in the head. Communications, electricity and water remained cut off yesterday to the city, which is growing short of food and medical supplies. One resident said he had seen gunmen in plainclothes randomly shooting people in the streets. “People are being slaughtered like sheep while walking in the street,” the man told the Associated Press by phone. “I saw with my own eyes one young boy on a motorcycle who was carrying vegetables being run over by a tank.” Families are burying their dead in their gardens, parks or on roadsides rather than risking travelling to a cemetery. Most journalists are barred from Syria and it is very hard to independently verify reports. Hama is a city of 800,000 people around 130 miles (210km) north of Damascus. It had fallen out of government hands and been free of security forces since June as residents turned on the regime and blockaded the streets against tanks. In 1982 president Bashar al-Assad’s father put down a rebellion by members of the Muslim Brotherhood there, killing between 10,000 and 25,000 people. My colleagues Ian Black and Nour Ali (a pseudonym) have the full story on yesterday’s developments in Hama here , also reporting that Syria’s democracy movement and western governments have spurned a decree by Assad permitting the formation of opposition parties. The US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, condemned the Syrian government’s attacks yesterday (see video below) , saying the regime was responsible for the deaths of 2,000 people since the start of the protests. Clinton said: Sometimes you lose sight of the incredible tragedy unfolding on the streets by just looking at the numbers, which are so numbing, but the shooting death of a one-year-old recently by the Syrian regime’s tanks and troops is a very stark example of what is going on. We think to date the government is responsible for the deaths of more than 2,000 people of all ages and the United States has worked very hard to corral and focus international opinion to take steps toward a unified response to the atrocities that are occurring. Jay Carney, a spokesman for the White House, said he felt Bashar al-Assad was “not indispensable and the US has nothing invested in Assad remaining in power”. Carney said the US viewed him as “the cause of instability in Syria” – but stopped short of calling for him to step down. Middle East Egypt Libya Syria Muammar Gaddafi Bashar Al-Assad Paul Owen guardian.co.uk

Posted by on August 5, 2011. Filed under News, Politics, World News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.