Libya: the battle for Sirte – live updates

• NTC forces launch major assault on Sirte • Gaddafi issues first audio message for two weeks • UN says 2,900 killed in Syrian crackdown 9.20am: Today’s assault on Sirte began at 6am, according to a report mentioned by BrownMoses reports below the line. Global Post’s James Foley, tweets: first time fighters leave at 6 am to go to front lines , cars streaming in from misrata side #sirte, lots of rumors of attack today Last night El Mundo’s Javier Espinosa had this update on the movement of Gaddafi loyalists: “Gaddafi forces moving just in circles around hospital, Ouagadougou (conference center) and university” one NTC commander #Sirte #Libya (I’ve added the location of the university to the Google Map embedded in the previous post.) 8.33am: Welcome to Middle East Live. The Gaddafi stronghold of Sirte has been reported to be on the brink of falling for two weeks and now forces loyal to the new government have launched another major new offensive against the city. Here are the main developments there and elsewhere in the region. Libya • This appears to be the “final push” against Sirte, according to the BBC. Forces loyal to Libya’s transitional government have launched a major assault on the city of Sirte, one of the last Gaddafi strongholds. Hundreds of vehicles have advanced on the city from both the east and the west and are close to the centre. The BBC’s Jonathan Head, on the city’s outskirts, says it is by far the biggest assault in recent days. • The battle for Sirte is a ramshackle affair, writes the Guardian’s Peter Beaumont. On the west side of the city, where the katibas [rebels] from Misrata launch almost daily attempts to take the Gaddafi stronghold of the Ougadougou conference centre, the fighters gathered for an impromptu breakfast outside a little field hospital. On Thursday they had poured in behind three tanks only to be driven back by missiles. A fighter said: “We want to get this thing finished quickly. We had a plan to try and open the road to the hospital to evacuate civilians, but there were too many snipers. Yesterday we tried many times to open the road.” • The International Committee of the Red Cross evacuated three wounded people from Ibn Sina hospital to a field hospital on the other side of the front line on Thursday. This map of Sirte shows the location of the hospital and Ougadougou conference centre where Gaddafi loyalists are holding out. • Fugitive leader Muammar Gaddafi has issued a new audio recording denouncing Libya’s new government and calling on his supporters to “raise our green flags” .  In the new message, his first for more than two weeks, he said: “How did it [the National Transitional Council] get its legitimacy? Did the Libyan people elect them? Did the Libyan people appoint them?” • A Libyan dissident is launching legal action against the British government after secret documents discovered in Tripoli exposed the role played by MI6 in his rendition to one of Gaddafi’s jails. In a case that threatens to cause acute discomfort to some former ministers in the last Labour government as well as senior intelligence officers, Sami al-Saadi is claiming damages from the UK for the years of torture he subsequently suffered. Syria • The UN’s estimate of the number of people killed in the Syrian uprising has increased to 2,900, according to a list of individuals complited by the high commissioner for human rights. Previous estimates put the death toll at about 2,700. • Syrian forces have crossed into Lebanese territory and shot dead a Syrian man living in a border area, according to the BBC. The man killed was reportedly a farmer living in a remote area of Lebanon’s eastern Bekaa region. It was not clear why he was targeted. Egypt Egypt’s ruling military generals have unveiled plans that could see them retain power for another 18 months, increasing fears that the country’s democratic transition process is under threat. Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, Egypt’s de facto ruler, said: “the armed forces have no interest in staying in power for a long time,” but he added, “we will not leave Egypt until we have fulfilled all we promised and do our duty towards the people.” Israel • Six Arab-Israeli towns in Israel’s southern Negev region have ground to a halt in protest at government plans to confiscate swathes of land from the Bedouin community. Schools, shops and municipal offices across the region closed for the day allowing more than 8,000 people to stage a demonstration in Beersheba rejecting the plan – the largest civil protest in the city’s history. • The Israeli opposition leader Tzipi Livni has avoided the possibility of prosecution in a British court for war crimes after the Foreign Office declared that she enjoys temporary diplomatic immunity. A private application for a warrant to arrest the former foreign minister during her visit to London was made on Tuesday and had been under consideration by the director of public prosecutions, Keir Starmer QC. But the announcement that the Foreign Office had issued a rarely heard of certificate that she was on a “special mission” infuriated Palestinian activists and human rights groups. Saudi Arabia Saudi Arabia has made clear it will not tolerate unrest in its eastern province, where 14 people, 11 of them policemen, were injured in protests this week. Any further trouble would be crushed with “an iron fist,” the government warned, anxious to avoid any perception that the first green shoots of the Arab spring have started to emerge in the Gulf’s conservative heartland. Jordan Prince Hassan has joined Twitter, Global Voices reports. In his most recent update Hassan writes: Thank you all so much for the touching welcome over #twitter this week. I hope everyone enjoy’s their weekend. #Amman #JO Libya Muammar Gaddafi Syria Nato US foreign policy Bashar Al-Assad Turkey Saudi Arabia Bahrain Jordan Israel Protest Egypt Matthew Weaver guardian.co.uk

Posted by on October 7, 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.