Libya: rebels move government to Tripoli – live updates

• British warplanes strike bunker in Sirte • Scattered fighting continues in Tripoli • Executing Gaddafi without trial would be illegal – UN • Gaddafi daughter reported killed in 1986 ‘still alive’ • Read a summary of today’s key events 1.30pm: Nato’s bombardment of Sirte goes way beyond the UN resolution to protect civilians and everyone knows it, argues former British diplomat Craig Murray. The Sirte operation is the “apotheosis of liberal intervention” he writes on his blog: What exactly is the reason that Sirte’s defenders are threatening civilians but the artillery of their attackers – and the bombings themselves – are not? Plainly this is a nonsense. People in foreign ministries, Nato, the BBC and other media are well aware that it is the starkest lie and propaganda, to say the assault on Sirte is protecting civilians. But does knowledge of the truth prevent them from peddling a lie? No … I have no time for Gadaffi. I have actually met him, and he really is nuts, and dangerous. There were aspects of his rule in terms of social development which were good, but much more that was bad and tyrannical. But if Nato is attacking him because he is a dictator, why is it not attacking Dubai, Bahrain, Syria, Burma, Zimbabwe, or Uzbekistan, to name a random selection of badly governed countries? “Liberal intervention” does not exist. What we have is the opposite; highly selective neo-imperial wars aimed at ensuring politically client control of key physical resources. 1.05pm: Here is a lunchtime summary . Libya • Fighting between pro- and anti-Gaddafi forces continued in at least one area of Tripoli, with fighters loyal to the Libyan leader reportedly bombarding the capital’s airport, damaging a plane. Sporadic shooting was reported elsewhere, but the streets were generally quite calm. The Guardian’s Martin Chulov reported “organised chaos” in Tripoli’s overwhelmed Matiga hospital ( see 11.22am ). Médecins Sans Frontières has begun providing medical support to three healthcare centres in the capital ( see 11.01am ). • British warplanes struck a large bunker in Sirte, Muammar Gaddafi’s hometown and a hold-out for his forces, today. Yesterday Britain’s Royal Air Force attacked targets in Sirte and al-Watiyah, and the road between Tripoli and its airport ( see 11.15am ). Nato said it bombed pro-Gaddafi positions in Tripoli and 29 “armed vehicles” in Sirte ( see 9.37am ). The British defence secretary, Liam Fox, has denied Nato’s attacks on Sirte were about targeting Gaddafi. “It’s not a question of finding Gaddafi, it’s ensuring the regime does not have the capability to continue waging war against its own people,” he told the BBC. “The attack that we launched on the bunker in Sirte last night was to make sure that there was no alternative command and control should the regime try to leave Tripoli.” • Gaddafi is still in hiding, and the UN human rights commissioner said executing him without trial would be illegal. “Summary executions are not permissible in peacetime or in wartime,” a spokesman said. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International urged both sides in the Libyan conflict to treat prisoners humanely and respect international conventions ( see 9.18am ). • New evidence emerged suggesting that Hanna Gaddafi, the adoptive daughter of the Libyan leader, was not killed in a 1986 US raid as the regime claimed ( see 12.06pm ). • The US is reportedly anxious to secure Gaddafi’s vast store of weapons ( see 10.09am ). Syria • Protests took place across the country and security forces carried out waves of arrests ( see 11.52am ). In Damascus, security forces fired at protesters, reportedly killing two ( see 12.11pm ). Bahrain Bahrain’s most senior Shia cleric warned the Gulf kingdom’s rulers this morning to either ease their grip on power or risk joining Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi and other Arab leaders swept aside by uprisings ( see 12.13pm ). 12.38pm: The Economist has some details I hadn’t seen before in its coverage of Libya today. Shortly after armed rebels captured the state telecoms company during their entry into the capital, Tripoli, on August 21st they sent a note to millions of mobile-phone users saying “Long live free Libya”. Then they added the equivalent of $40 to all accounts and restored the country’s internet connection, which had been cut at the start of the rebellion. The magazine also has a good feature on who exactly the leaders of the rebel National Transitional Council – the leaders of the new Libya – are. The NTC is “a self-selected body whose nucleus was the group of human-rights lawyers who had organised the protests that snowballed into the Benghazi uprising,” the Economist writes. Its membership was then expanded to take in members chosen in close consultation with tribal and revolutionary leaders in western areas also rebelling against Muammar Gaddafi’s rule. The magazine pays tribute to the NTC’s strategy of making sure that “whenever possible, any advance on a government-held town was co-ordinated with an uprising of revolutionaries from within. This appears to have given each part of Libya a sense of having delivered its own ‘liberation’, as opposed to having been conquered by easterners.” Much of the “rebel manpower” is made up of 40 or more privately-organised and -funded militias known as katibas, or brigades. “Each katiba is usually drawn from one town, commanded by a respected local military veteran or, in some cases, by the businessman who financed it.” The magazine has an interesting line on the killing of rebel commander and former Gaddafi public security minister Abdul Fatah Younis, whose killing in July is still unexplained. NTC judges had issued an arrest warrant for General Younis on suspicion that he had made unauthorised contact with Colonel Gaddafi, but the killers themselves are reported to have been rogue katiba fighters with a personal vendetta against the one-time Gaddafi loyalist. They may have been members of the Abu Ubeidah Ibn al-Jarrah brigade, said to be a force of former political prisoners, some of them radical Islamists. After Younis’s death, the brigade was reportedly dissolved. 12.32pm: Back to Libya . New amateur video has emerged purporting to show part of yesterday’s gun battle for Abu Salim, where some rebels believed Muammar Gaddafi was hiding. The footage shows the intensity of the fighting: at several points there is so much gunfire that the sounds of individual shots blur into a constant loud hiss. 12.13pm: Bahrain ‘s most senior Shia cleric warned the Gulf kingdom’s rulers this morning to either ease their grip on power or risk joining Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi and other Arab leaders swept aside by uprisings. The sermon by Sheikh Isa Qassim was attended by thousands of worshippers, and was a show of defiance after Bahrain’s justice minister accused the cleric of promoting unrest in the nation. 12.11pm: Forces loyal to Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian president, fired at protesters demanding his removal in the Damascus suburb of Douma after Friday prayers this morning. “Protesters phoned in to say that two people have been killed, but this is an initial report still to be confirmed,” an activist in Damascus told Reuters by phone. 12.06pm: New evidence has emerged suggesting that Hanna Gaddafi, the adoptive daughter of the Libyan leader, was not killed in a 1986 US raid as the regime claimed. Mary Fitzgerald from the Irish Times found documents in her name including British Council 2007 certificate saying she got an A in an English language course. Many have speculated that reports of Hanna’s death were made up for propaganda. Earlier this year Germany’s Die Welt said her name was listed on a document relating to Gaddafi family assets and that she was now a doctor in London. Fitzgerald’s discovery in ruins of the Bab al-Azizia compound report appeared to backed this up. Amid the bookshelves lined with medical textbooks and copies of Colonel Gaddafi’s Green Book [of his political philosophy], I found passport photographs of a woman, dressed in medical garb, who appeared to be in her mid-20s. Some of the rebels sifting through the room’s contents shouted excitedly: “It’s Hanna, it’s Hanna, the daughter Gaddafi lied about. This was her room.” I found an examination paper from a Libyan university medical faculty which was signed “Hanna Muammar Gaddafi” in Arabic. A photograph showed a woman who seemed to be Hanna with a group of people, including Colonel Gaddafi’s blood daughter Ayesha. A British Council certificate, dated 19 July 2007, showed that a Hanna Muammar Gaddafi had completed an English language course at its Libyan centre, achieving an A grade. 11.59am: Here’s my colleague Paddy Allen’s latest interactive map of the fighting in Libya . You can zoom in on Tripoli and Sirte. 11.52am: Nour Ali (a pseudonym) writes about today’s protests in Syria , which are being called “the Friday of patience and steadfastness”. Nour says this is the 24th Friday in a row that Syrians have taken to the streets and many – with thoughts of Yemen in mind – are afraid that a stalemate is taking hold. Protests have already been reported after Friday prayers from villages around the northern commercial hub of Aleppo to the eastern border town of Al-Boukamal, which activists say has been besieged on this week. “Few support the regime now but until there is a credible alternative, nothing will shift,” said one Damascus-based analyst. “We need the opposition to get their act together.” He said many questions remain in people’s minds including what will happen to the ruling Baath party, the security forces, who have carried out the majority of the crackdown, and the Alawites of president Bashar al-Assad’s sect. Despite increasing international pressure, the regime remains defiant. As international sanctions tighten, it is trying to rally Syrians by emphasising the damage it will cause to ordinary people. In an interview with AFP news agency Adib Mayaleh, the governor of Syria’s central bank, warned that Syrians will have to “tighten their belts”. “The ordinary citizen will suffer … This will create unemployment and poverty,” he told the agency. Syrians have been receiving text messages informing them that their visa cards will no longer work as an effect of sanctions. Meanwhile state media agency Sana says police are hunting for the men responsible for beating up dissident artist Ali Ferzat, whose attack was reported by the Guardian yesterday . Most people believe the regime was involved in sending what is being read as yet another message of warning to dissidents, but opposition activists admit that no one knows if security forces acting under orders or pro-regime thugs are responsible. 11.45am: In this CNN video , Rick Stengel, the managing editor of Time magazine, says the fact that Muammar Gaddafi’s leadership was never formally institutionalised may be a good thing as the rebels attempt to build a new Libya. “It cuts both ways to not have institutions. They can actually start creating a kind of democratic Libya right from scratch.” He said Libya’s small population and high oil revenue would also benefit the new government in the immediate future. But he added: It’s very hard to create democratic institutions in a country that never had them before. We’re still not actually sure who the rebels are, and whether there are a Thomas Jefferson or a George Washington or a John Adams among them. We certainly hope so. This week’s Time magazine has a horrendously misconceived cover showing Gaddafi’s head blowing away in a sandstorm. 11.37am: It may be premature to be talking of a NTC government in Tripoli, but on the diplomatic front it is being increasing recognised as such. The African Union could recognise the rebels as Libya’s legitimate government as early as today at a meeting in Ethiopia capital, Reuters reports. A South African government source said: There is a strong likelihood that the African Union will recognise the NTC today but call for inclusion of the Gaddafi regime in the interim transitional government … The reality is that the AU cannot ignore the NTC as a major player in Libya today and its stance will have to recognise that. Meanwhile, NTC chairman Mahmoud Jibril said he would seek a seat on the UN for the NTC next week. “We hope that next month Libya will be occupying the seat it holds at the United Nations,” Jibril told a news conference in Istanbul. Jibril also talked more about the plans to form a Tripoli government: When the regime collapses all eyes will turn to the NTC to provide the Libyan people with services they have been deprived of for the last six months, including power and salaries. In order to meet the expectations we need the finances. It is very important that the Libyan people don’t feel deprived of resources. We have to establish an army, a strong police force to be able to meet the needs of the people and we need capital and we need assets. All our friends in the international community speak of stability and security. We need that too. 11.22am: “The emergency room is awash with blood,” Martin Chulov reports from Tripoli’s Matiga hospital where scores of Gaddafi’s fighters are being treated after a fierce gun battle in the Abu Salim neighbourhood. Speaking by telephone from the hospital, Martin said: It’s a scene of organised chaos. The emergency room is awash with blood and iodine and people trying to clean up as more patients come in. What we are dealing with here is a large number of Gaddafi loyalists who were injured in fighting late yesterday. Many of them are in particularly bad shape. A couple of them look quite emaciated – they haven’t eaten or drunk for a couple of days and they have got some severe wounds. The doctors here say they are being treated just like any other patient would be; there is no discrimination. Of the battle itself, Martin said: It was a particularly lethal afternoon. There was a fierce battle that ensued in the suburb of Abu Salim … where an apartment complex was assaulted by rebels and defended heavily by regime loyalists. The rebels were speculating that there may have been some high targets inside that building. There weren’t. However there was a fierce firefight for it. There has been no more fighting today, Martin reports, but he says the National Transitional Council faces a tough challenge to form a government in Tripoli. They [the NTC] know they have to get here as soon as they can to establish some order [to Tripoli] to avoid things decaying. We are seeing large numbers or rebels arriving from the east. As we were arriving at the hospital there were large numbers of battle trucks from Misrata and Benghazi for the very first time. That seemed to a symbolic breakthrough for the eastern rebels. In terms of the political administration, it is not a stable city, and they don’t have a base here yet. But they will need to have one very soon. 11.15am: Britain’s Ministry of Defence has put out a statement explaining what British aircraft did in Libya yesterday ( Nato’s update is here ). The bulletin mentions an airstrike on Sirte. At around midnight, a formation of Tornado aircraft, which had set off from RAF Marham in Norfolk, fired a “salvo” of missiles at “a large headquarters bunker in Gaddafi’s hometown of Sirte”. The Tornado has a top speed of around 900mph and it is approximately 2000 miles from Norfolk to Sirte, so it would have taken them a couple of hours to fly there. RAF Tornado aircraft also “located and destroyed one of Colonel Gaddafi’s few remaining long-range surface-to-air missile systems, near al-Watiyah, close to the Tunisian border,” said Major General Nick Pope. And Tornados and Typhoons also destroyed a “command and control node” on the road between Tripoli and its airport. 11.01am: Médecins Sans Frontières has begun providing medical support to healthcare facilities in Tripoli. MSF said three centres it assessed “were suffering from massive shortages of life-saving medical supplies and equipment”. MSF has provided dressings, antibiotics, anaesthetics, and painkillers. Some centres also requested surgical equipment, “such as external fixators and oxygen”, which MSF will provide in the next few days, and will bring in additional medical staff. The humanitarian organisation said health facilities in Tripoli “do not have the infrastructure and systems to cope with an emergency on this scale”. MSF has also sent medical teams to Zlitan, east of Tripoli, and Zawiya in the west. 10.19am: In his latest audio address Gaddafi appeal to Libya’s tribes to fight back. Mohammed A Bamyeh, professor of sociology at the University of Pittsburgh (left), who has conducted research on the subject, argues that the regime has overstated the tribal nature of Libyan society. Writing on the Muftah blog he says: In Libya, actual tribal allegiance, understood as the loyalty that members of one distinct tribe have to their fellows, has never been unconditional … Since the current uprising began, Libya’s various tribes have issued numerous statements about the situation, which largely reflect the patriotism that pervades these groups. My personal examination of a sample of 28 tribal declarations, issued between February 23 and March 9, 2011, reveals that the vast majority highlighted national unity or national salvation rather than tribal interests. These declarations also demonstrate that Libya’s tribes are not homogeneous entities, but rather are comprised of diverse members with varying social and economic backgrounds. This reality reflects the nature of Libyan society as a whole, which has a 90% urban population and in which inter-marriages across tribal lines are common. 10.09am: The US is anxious to secure Gaddafi’s vast store of weapons, according to AP citing two officials. Some US intelligence officials have been pushing to expand the CIA’s role in Libya to track down the weaponry faster, unilaterally without the rebels’ help if necessary. They fear the rockets in particular may be quickly sold, ending up with al-Qaida or fuelling a Libyan insurgency for years to come, the officials say. Already, the prices of the shoulder-launched missiles called MANPADs have fallen on the regional black market, the officials say, suggesting some of Gadhafi’s stores are already being sold. Wired magazine’s Danger Room blog has more detail about the concerns about Libyan weapons . The ease with which the rebels were able to arm themselves points to their next massive problem: securing those weapons before they fuel a lethal insurgency or flood the global arms bazaar … Peter Bouckaert, emergencies director at Human Rights Watch, has spent time on the ground in Libya during the uprising. He tells Danger Room that “weapon proliferation out of Libya is potentially one of the largest we have ever documented — 2003 Iraq pales in comparison — and so the risks are equally much more significant.” Many in the west worry about the remnants of Gaddafi’s chemical-weapons program and shoulder-launched anti-aircraft missiles. However, Bouckaert says it’s Libya’s vast arsenals of low-tech gear like artillery shells and Grad missiles that are most likely to be fashioned into insurgent weapons, such as improvised explosive devices. 9.50am: AP has new footage of rebels entering Gaddafi’s tunnels in Tripoli . They found stores of food, water, banks of phones and files, and another golf buggy. “Now we are free we can do everything,” one of the rebels clearing the tunnel said. The Washington Post took a tour of one the bunkers . Forty feet underground, beneath a sprawling Gaddafi family mansion, lies a bunker that would have made a great place to hide. The entrance is hard to find: To get there, you go past the front door equipped with a fingerprint reader, through the garden and behind neatly trimmed shrubs, where there is a mysterious passageway. From there, it’s three flights of stairs down until you arrive at a one-foot-thick steel door. Behind the door, there’s a lair straight out of a James Bond film … As the rebel forces continue to hunt for Gaddafi and his sons, the nest of bunkers and tunnels beneath this capital city has become a prime focus of their search. 9.37am: Nato has confirmed that its jets bombed pro-Gaddafi forces’ positions in Tripoli on Thursday and hit 29 “armed vehicles” in Sirte. Here’s its list of “key hits” (pdf) in the last 24 hours. In the vicinity of Tripoli: 1 Command and Control Node, 1 Surface to Air Missile Transloader, 1 Surface to Air Missile Launcher. In the vicinity of Sirte: 29 Armed Vehicles. 9.18am: Human rights organisations have urged both sides in the Libyan conflict to treat prisoners humanely and respect international conventions. In a letter to the chairman of the National Transitional Council, Mahmoud Jibril, Human Rights Watch urged the rebels to allow international observers to visit captured prisoners, including members of the Gaddafi family if they are caught. It said: We hope you will ensure that the International Committee for the Red Cross is able to visit all prisoners captured in the fight for Tripoli – especially former senior officials and, if captured, Muammar Gaddafi and members of his family – as soon as possible after their detention. Detainees should be brought before a judge as soon as that is feasible. Amnesty International said: Both sides to the ongoing conflict in Libya must ensure that detainees in their custody are not tortured or otherwise ill-treated. 9.01am: A rescue ship for migrants stranded in Tripoli has loaded passengers in the city’s port after being anchored off the coast for two days while fighting raged. Pasquale Lupoli, regional director of the International Organisation for Migration, said: “It has not been easy to do this operation. We never expected it to be. Nevertheless, there is a huge sense of relief that all our efforts are in the end helping these migrants.” A second boat with a much larger capacity is due to carry out another evacuation over the weekend, IOM said. 8.19am: Welcome to Middle East Live. Libyan rebels have begun to transfer government to Tripoli while fighting and the hunt for Muammar Gaddafi and his family goes on. Here’s a run down of the latest developments: Libya •  In its first Tripoli press conference the National Transitional Council said its cabinet would be moving from Benghazi to the capital. Al Jazeera quoted Ali Tarhouni, the NTC’s finance minister, as saying: “I declare the beginning and assumption of the executive committee’s work in Tripoli”. •  The UN’s security council committee agreed to unblock $1.5bn (£921m) in Libyan funds that had been frozen since the start of the conflict. The money will be used to pay for humanitarian supplies, basic services in Libyan cities, and salaries for civil servants, police and soldiers who have not been paid in months. • As the hunt for Gaddafi continues a new audio message from the Libyan leader urged his supporters to continue the battle. “Don’t leave Tripoli for the rats. Fight them, fight them, and kill them,” he said in his third message since rebels captured Tripoli, al-Arabiya reports. •  A central Tripoli apartment block close to Gaddafi’s ruined compound was the scene of a prolonged gun battle on Thursday. One rebel commander suggested Gaddafi, and some of his sons, might be holed up in the building, but others believed it had been used as a refuge by regime fighters who fled the carnage in the nearby Bab al-Aziziya compound. The New York Times reported that Thursday could have been the bloodiest day so far in the battle for Tripoli . In their drive to take command of Tripoli, the rebels concentrated their forces on a block-by-block battle for the streets of the Abu Salim neighborhood, a center of Colonel Gaddafi’s support. By late afternoon, the fighting had once again swamped Tripoli Central Hospital with wounded civilians and combatants. • Dozens of bodies have been found in Tripoli with signs of executions carried out by both sides in the civil war. The bullet-riddled bodies of 30 Gaddafi fighters were discovered by Reuters. Two had been bound with plastic handcuffs, and one was on an ambulance stretcher with an intravenous drip still in his arms. Medical workers said the bodies of 17 people, believed to be civilians, were discovered in the Bab al-Aziziya compound. •  Secret documents from the Gaddafi regime, discovered by the Guardian, detail clandestine lobbying of Nato, a US congressman and even Barack Obama and the regime’s fear of full-scale US invasion. The Libyan government offered Democratic congressman Dennis Kucinich, an opponent of the Nato campaign, an all-expenses-paid-trip to Tripoli billed as a  “peace mission”. • British and French special forces on the ground in eastern Libya are helping rebels prepare to assault Sirte, the last coastal town still in the hands of pro-Gaddafi forces, a rebel officer told the Guardian. The soldiers have taken a leading role not only in guiding bombers to blast a path for opposition fighters but also in planning the offensive that finally broke the six-month siege of Misrata, Mohammed Subka, a communications specialist in the Al Watum brigade, said. Syria • Syrian forces beat up a prominent Syrian political cartoonist and left him bleeding on the side of a road, in the latest episode of a campaign to quash dissent against the regime of President Bashar al-Assad. Ali Ferzat, 60, is one of the Arab world’s most famous cultural figures, and his drawings have pushed at the boundaries of freedom of expression in Syria. • Eight people were killed in the latest violence as more post-Friday prayer protests are expected today. Reuters said seven of the protesters were killed in the city of Hama, in the countryside of Aleppo to the north, in the northwestern province of Idlib and in Homs, hometown of Assad’s wife Asma. The eighth civilian casualty was a Turkish truck driver killed by a pro-Assad militia on the main highway leading to Turkey in the town of Rastan just north of Damascus. Middle East Libya Muammar Gaddafi Nato US foreign policy Syria Bashar Al-Assad Matthew Weaver Paul Owen guardian.co.uk

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