NewsBreakingOnline

• Britain presses for unfettered access to Misrata • Saif al-Islam Gaddafi: Libya is fighting terrorists in Misrata • Gaddafi forces attack Ajdabiya 2.24pm – Bahrain: Some of you have asking about Zainab al-Khawaja, who went on hunger strike last week in protest against the beating and arrest of her dissident father in Bahrain. Here is an update from Robert Booth who covered her story last week. I spoke to Zainab al-Khawaja this morning. She was hospitalised briefly yesterday but is now back in bed in a secret location in Bahrain. This is what she told me: “I decided beforehand that I didn’t want to the hospital, but my family forced me to go. My pulse was very low so they got worried and decided to take me to a private hospital. They ran tests on me and said I need fluid intravenously. I refused because I didn’t want to break my hunger strike. Some nurses and doctors tried to talk me into it but I refused and came back home after they said if I wanted to stay they would have to tell the ministry of the interior. It made me realise that it is not only the government hospitals that are unsafe, but the private hospitals too. People are being arrested from their hospital beds if they have injuries that are linked to protesting, like shotgun wounds. It shows the ministry of interior has ordered all hospitals to inform them if anyone political comes to them as a patient. That means there are more people injured and suffering at home with nowhere to go.” Al-Khawaja said she has left her home and is staying at an unidentified location after a member of her family was threatened with arrest. “It has become much more difficult to stand up and walk and even to sit up. When I get up, my heart beat goes very very fast and I get out of breath and I feel very dizzy. I am drinking water and sometimes water with sugar, which means my mother has prevailed because that is what she wanted. I have still heard nothing about my family so plan is to continue my hunger strike and see what is going to happen. They might come for me, but I am not concerned. I am too worried about my husband and father. Every hour, every minute they are in custody I am worried.” 2.17pm: AP has more on efforts to evacuate people from Misrata. Nearly 1,000 people who are among several thousand stranded in the area of Misrata’s port boarded an aid ship sent by the International Organisation for Migration. Most of the passengers were migrant workers, but also included 100 Libyans, among them 23 wounded in the fighting. The injured included a child shot in the face and an amputee, the aid group said. “We wanted to be able to take on more people, but it was not possible,” said Jeremy Haslam, who heads the group’s boat rescue. “Although the exchange of fire subsided while we were boarding with an eerie silence at one point, we had a very limited time to get the migrants and Libyans on board the ship and then leave,” he said. The organisation said at least 4,000 additional migrants are stranded in the port area, including women and children. Many of the refugees have been living out in the open or in containers in the port area for nearly two months, lacking access to water and medical and running short on food. IOM said many of the migrants are weak and dehydrated. Haslam said the group needs funding for a bigger boat to recuse the remaining migrants in one trip. 2.08pm: A wounded woman is evacuated onto a ferry carrying some 1,000 migrant workers stranded from Misrata to Benghazi. _ 2.06pm: Britain’s International Development secretary said the UK is to help evacuate 5,000 people trapped in Misrata and provide medical assistance to those who remain in towns across western Libya. Andrew Mitchell, who is in New York to discuss the crisis in Misrata, said the emergency evacuations will be carried out by the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) and will get foreign workers who have managed to reach the port safely out. Britain will also fund International Medical Corps (IMC) to provide critical medical aid for those caught up in the violence across western Libya. I am determined that Britain continues to provide help to those innocent civilians who are caught up in the ongoing violence,” said Mitchell. “Thousands of foreign workers have managed to reach the port but find themselves at terrible risk from incoming fire, with no way to get out. These evacuations will take them to safety and help reduce the demand in Misrata for the very limited supplies of food, water and medical supplies available. 1.57pm: Doctor Abdul Kadher Mukhtar tends to sniper victims at the Hekma hospital in Misrata. _ 1.54pm: I’ve just managed to get through to Donatella Rovera, a researcher from Amnesty International, on a very bad line. Conditions, she says, are very bad and getting worse. The centre of the city is cut off, there has been heavy shelling in the east of the town, where the port is, and to the west as well. The bread queues are very very long as are the ones for petrol and electricity is catastrophic, she says. The question is how long the situation in Misrata can be tenable. Amnesty last week reported fresh evidence of extrajudicial executions apparently committed by Gaddafi’s forces near Ajdabiya, in the east, in recent days. Amnesty said its researchers i on 10 April saw the bodies of two opposition fighters who had been shot in the back of the head after their hands had been bound behind their backs. 1.41pm: My colleague, Harriet Sherwood, has more details on this agreement on humanitarian aid for Libya. As she points out, the UN secretary-general did not confirm whether the UN would be allowed unrestricted access to Misrata despite official Libyan statements to this effect. The UN has signed an agreement with the Libyan government to provide humanitarian aid to the country, the UN secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon, said on Monday. A Libyan government spokesman told reporters in Tripoli that the agreement was “a very positive step”. He said it covered safe passage for people to leave the besieged city of Misrata and provide aid, including food, medicines and basic services. Ban said the UN would set up a presence in the capital Tripoli but did not confirm whether it would be allowed free access to Misrata. Officials from the International Committee of the Red Cross were given permission to visit Misrata to evaluate the scale of the humanitarian crisis at the weekend. Libyan authorities said two assessment visits had been made, but the ICRC has made no public statement. Government forces have laid siege to the city, Libya’s third largest, for seven weeks. Local witnesses describe appalling conditions with more than 1,000 people killed by shelling and sniper fire and medical services overwhelmed with injured civilians. The Libyan authorities insist that the rebellion inside Misrata is being driven by al-Qaida and armed by the Qatari government. Ibrahim denied government forces were using cluster bombs or any heavy weapons. Rebel spokesmen in Misrata say Nato is not doing enough to prevent a “massacre” of the people of Misrata. 12.46pm – Bahrain: Seven anti-government protesters will go on trial before a Bahrain military court for the killing of two policemen. The Bahrain news agency said a military prosecutor charged seven suspected opposition supporters with premeditated murder of two policemen. More from AP. The seven are the first of the hundreds in custody to have been charged with a crime since Bahrain’s military stormed the protesters’ encampment in Manama’s Pearl Square in an effort to end weeks of street marches by Bahrain’s Shia majority demanding greater political freedoms and equal rights. Among those detained are also dozens of Shia professionals, such as doctors and lawyers, including the lawyer who was to defend the seven suspected opposition supporters in the military court. The attorney, Mohammed al-Tajer, is one of Bahrain’s most prominent human rights lawyers. He has represented hundreds of clients against the state, including Shia activists accused of plotting against the Sunni monarchy. He was taken into custody on Saturday. 12.37pm: This video from France 24 shows some of the devastation in Misrata after seven weeks of fighting. _ 12.33pm: Human Rights Watch yesterday said at least 16 civilians have been killed in indiscriminate attacks on Misrata since April 14. Human Rights Watch last week accused the Libyan government of using cluster bombs in Misrata, which the Libyan government denies. “Libyan government forces have repeatedly fired mortars and Grad rockets into residential neighborhoods in Misrata, causing civilian casualties,” said Peter Bouckaert, emergencies director at Human Rights Watch. “The Soviet-made Grad in particular is one of the world’s most inaccurate rocket systems and should never be fired in areas with civilians.” 12.16pm: Al-Jazeera’s Jonah Hull managed to get into Misrata and filed this report. He says the rebels are gaining ground but that hospitals are suffering from shortages. _ 12.07pm – Yemen: Plainclothes police fired on protesters in the Yemeni port of Hudaida, wounding at least 15 people, Reuters reports. This follows large demonstrations on Sunday when hundreds of thousands took to the streets denouncing President Ali Abdullah Saleh for saying women should not take part in protests. 11.42am: AP has more on the agreement between Gaddafi and the UN on providing humanitarian aid to Libya, with the Libyan government apparently ready to allow aid agencies unrestricted access to Misrata. It will be interesting to see how the Libyan government squares that with Saif al-Islam Gaddafi’s view ( 9.39am ) that Misrata is full of terrorists. The Libyan government spokesman, Moussa Ibrahim, says the deal included setting up a humanitarian corridor to the city of Misrata. “The agreement (with the UN) is to provide safe passage for people to leave Misrata, to provide aid, food and medicine,” Ibrahim said… He said the deal also called for free access of international aid agencies and ensuring that electricity, water and other services are provided to Misrata… Valerie Amos, the UN humanitarian chief. said she had received assurances from Gaddafi’s government authorities that the UN would be allowed in to Misrata. 11.29am: Bernard-Henri Levy, the French intellectual, is very bullish about the Libyan opposition. In an interview in Le Monde , he expressed confidence that the rebels will eventually prevail. More than ever, everything points to this: Free Libya, with its allies, will win against the tyrant. On Misrata, he says boats that go to Benghazi to ferry out the wounded, also take in weapons for the rebels. He says he saw cases of ammunition hidden under bags of powdered milk, anti-tank missile launchers, and an anti-aircraft missile being loaded on to a boat going to Misrata. If what Levy says is correct – ships are taking in weapons as well as supplies to Misrata – then Tripoli will not want any groups to have unrestricted access to the city. 10.43am – Syria: Syrian forces killed eight protesters overnight in the central city of Homs in confrontations after the death of a tribal leader in custody, a rights campaigner told Reuters. Homs is boiling. Security forces and the regime thugs have been provoking armed tribes for a month now. But civilians in large numbers also took to the streets in different areas of Homs last night and they were shot at in cold blood,” the rights campaigner said. The top story in the Washington Post is about secret US financing of Syrian political opposition groups and related projects, including a satellite TV channel that beams anti-government programming into the country. Based on cables from WikiLeaks, the Post says the US state department funnelled as much as $6m to the Movement for Justice and Development, a London-based network of Syrian exiles, to operate a satellite channel called Barada TV. The London-based satellite channel, Barada TV, began broadcasting in April 2009 but has ramped up operations to cover the mass protests in Syria as part of a long-standing campaign to overthrow the country’s autocratic leader, Bashar al-Assad… It is unclear whether the state department is still funding Syrian opposition groups, but the cables indicate money was set aside at least through September 2010. While some of that money has also supported programs and dissidents inside Syria. 10.27am: The UN secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon, says the UN has reached an agreement with the Libyan government on providing humanitarian aid in Tripoli. The Associated Press reports that the deal to establish a “humanitarian presence” in the Libyan capital was agreed yesterday by his special envoy to Libya and Valerie Amos, the UN humanitarian chief. But no word on Misrata. 9.39am: Misrata, which seems to be assuming the symbolic importance of Sarajevo in the Bosnian war, has come under bombardment again today. “The Gaddafi forces are shelling Misrata now. They are firing rockets and artillery rounds on the eastern side – the Nakl el Theqeel (road) and the residential areas around it,” Abdubasset Abu Mzeireq told Reuters. He said 17 people were killed in yesterday’s shelling. Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, who was asked about Misrata in the Washington Post interview, described the fighters there as terrorists, drawing parallels with Grozny in Chechnya and Fallujah in Iraq. As Saif insists that the fighters are terrorists it will be hard to see how the Libyan government will agree to unrestricted humanitarian access to the city. Arms and ammunition and terrorists are coming every day via that port… So, excuse me, you want the Libyan government to sit and wait every day for the terrorists to get stronger? You know, the army was in dialogue and in negotiation with those people for one month. One month, trying to persuade them to lay down arms and go back home. One month, we failed. And then, they used the time to fortify their site. So you want us to repeat the same mistake again? Of course not. And by the way, those criminals, they kidnap people, they kill people, they execute people, they have their own courts, their own police, army. No government in the world will allow such a behaviour. In 1992, Francois Mitterrand flew by helicopter into Sarajevo with “a message of hope” for its 400,000 hungry and terrorised residents. One wonders whether Nicolas Sarkozy would dare to emulate Mitterrand’s stunt. 9.00am: Good morning and welcome to our coverage of Libya and other developments in the Middle East. • Britain’s international development secretary, Andrew Mitchell, will be holding urgent talks at the UN in New York on how to get aid to Misrata, the rebel-held city that has been under siege for seven weeks . Tens of thousands of people are trapped in Misrata, Libya’s third city and the only one under rebel control in the west. • In a defiant interview, Saif al-Islam, one of Muammar Gaddafi’s sons, described anti-government forces in Misrata as criminals and terrorists . He told the Washington Post that the Libyan government would not “sit and wait every day for the terrorists to get stronger”. • Government forces yesterday mounted a heavy assault on Libyan rebels holding the key town of Ajdabiya in a sign that the regime is stepping up efforts to regain territory in the east of the country . As fighting continues, David Cameron said there “no question of an invasion or an occupation” under the terms of the UN resolution and that this was making fighting the conflict “more difficult in many ways” for the coalition. Libya Arab and Middle East unrest Middle East Syria Bahrain Mark Tran guardian.co.uk