Libya: Gaddafi loyalists refuse to surrender – live updates

• Loyalists refuse to surrender despite Sirte invasion threat • NTC rejects UN plan to send military observers • Frozen assets released to restore basic services • Amnesty documents killing of 88 people in Syrian prisons 9.24am: “The mood here is pretty raucous,” Luke Harding reports from Tripoli Martyr’s Square at the start of Eid celebrations. Speaking above the sound of celebratory gunfire Luke says: There’s been a revolution here so you would expect people to fire. But this morning they have been firing again with Kalashnikovs and heavy weaponry and some people have been hurt from falling bullets. It shows that there is no control in this city whatsoever. “I expect we are going to get three days of this,” Luke said. (I’ll transcribe more from Luke later). 8.32am: Welcome to Middle East Live. Here’s a morning run through of the main developments: Libya • Loyal followers of Muammar Gaddafi are refusing to surrender in his home town of Sirte raising the prospect of new fighting in Libya when an ultimatum expires after this week’s Eid holiday , Reuters reports. The head of the National Transitional Council Mustafa Abdel Jalil, said: Muammar Gaddafi is not finished yet. He still poses a threat to Libyans and the revolution. He still has pockets of support in Libya and supporters outside Libya, both individuals and countries. • British held Libyan assets worth £1bn were released last night by the UN to help fund basic services, pay salaries and boost confidence in Libyan banks. The banknotes, together with $1.5bn in US-based assets unfrozen by the UN security council sanctions committee last week, were aimed at supporting efforts by the National Transitional Council to bring stability in the wake of Gaddafi’s fall. • Libya’s new leaders have rejected UN plans to send military observers to help stabilise the country , the BBC reports. UN adviser Ian Martin appeared to confirm a memo leaked earlier this week setting out the deployment of military observers and police to Libya. But Libya’s deputy representative to the UN, Ibrahim Dabbashi, said such a deployment was unnecessary. He said: “They [the UN] put the possibility of deploying peacekeepers on the ground but in fact the Libyan crisis is a special case. It is not a civil war, it is not a conflict between two parties, it is the people who are defending themselves against the dictatorship.” •  Zimbabwe has expelled the Libyan ambassador and his staff from Harare after they declared support for the National Transitional Council and tore down portraits of Gaddafi. The state newspaper the Herald quoted foreign affairs minister Simbarashe Mumbengegwi as saying: Once you renounce the authority, which gave you letters of credence, pull down their portrait and burn the flag and pledge allegiance to a different authority, it means that act alone deprives you of the diplomatic standing, which you had been accorded. • Abdulqadir al-Baghdadi, one of the diplomats accused of the 1984 killing of PC Yvonne Fletcher outside the Libyan embassy in London, has been found dead in Tripoli. Those seeking justice for Fletcher have claimed that a junior diplomat, Abdulmagid Salah Ameri, was seen firing a gun from inside the embassy. The NTC has said that it knows the location of a third suspect implicated in Fletcher’s killing, Matouk Mohammed Matouk , according to the Daily Telegraph. • New details have emerged of the route used by Muammar Gaddafi’s family to escape into neighbouring Algeria. The fact that a conspicuous convoy of six armoured limousines could drive unmolested down the length of the country, from Bani Walid to the pro-Gaddafi bastion at Sebha, on the edge of the Sahara desert, and then west to the Algerian border, indicates that there is a wide swath of the central Libyan hinterland outside the NTC’s grasp. • NTC interior minister, Ahmed Darrat said the security situation in Tripoli was now almost normal, with few explosions and no serious signs of a loyalist guerrilla backlash. Asked how the Gaddafi family members were able to flee the capital last week, he said: “They may not have been in Tripoli. They may have been outside it.” It was a good point.Two leading members of the regime – Saif al-Islam and government spokesman Moussa Ibrahim – were spotted for the last time at Tripoli’s Rixos hotel late last Monday. But other Gaddafi relatives were probably never there. Syria •  At least 88 people, including 10 children, have died in detention in Syria since the uprising against the regime began in March in what amounts to “systematic persecution on a vast scale”, according to Amnesty International. The majority of victims were tortured or ill-treated, with injuries ranging from beatings, burns and blunt-force traumas to whipping marks, electrocution, slashes and mutilated genitals. Amnesty researcher Neli Simmonds said : The accounts of torture we have received are horrific. We believe the Syrian government to be systematically persecuting its own people on a vast scale. • Europe is to impose an oil embargo on Syria, in effect freezing almost all business between Damascus and the EU, Syria’s main trading partner. The decision will halt more than €3bn (£2.6bn) a year in Syrian crude oil and petroleum products being exported to Europe. “This is trying to hit the oil that’s a critical financial lifeline to the regime,” said an EU official. Bahrain •  Bahrain has pardoned a poet who was jailed after mocking the country’s Sunni monarchy during pro-democracy protests this spring. Ayat al-Qurmozi, 20, was sentenced to a year in prison but released in July. The information affairs authority said Qurmozi had been among those declared pardoned by King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa during a speech on Sunday. • Bahrain has defended the continued detention of doctors who treated those injured in the protests. In a letter to the Guardian Luma E Bashmi, an official from the information ministry, said the doctors were not charged for carrying out medical duties. The most serious charges – and the ones made against some of the doctors still being detained – include the possession of hidden unlicensed machine guns, ammunition and knives etc for the purpose of implementing terrorist acts. Israel The Israeli military is to train Jewish settlers in the West Bank and plans to equip them with tear gas and stun grenades to confront Palestinian demonstrators when their leaders press for UN recognition next month, the Independent reports. Libya Muammar Gaddafi Arab and Middle East unrest Middle East Syria Bashar Al-Assad Nato US foreign policy United Nations Bahrain Eid al-Fitr Israel Matthew Weaver guardian.co.uk

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