NATO strikes Tripoli, rebels refuse polls

  NATO planes resumed bombardments of Tripoli after Muammar Gaddafi's son said the Libyan leader was willing to hold elections and step aside if he lost, an offer rejected by rebels and the United States.


Gaddafi's son Saif al-Islam told an Italian newspaper that the elections could be held within three months and transparency could be guaranteed through international observers.

He said his father would be ready to cede power if he lost the election, though he would not go into exile.

But Prime Minister Al-Baghdadi Ali Al-Mahmoudi appeared to throw the potential concession into question, saying on Thursday that the leader of the revolution was not concerned by "any referendum."

A visiting Russian envoy said the Libyan leadership had reiterated that Gaddafi's departure was a "red line."

The rebel leadership in the eastern stronghold of Benghazi rejected Gaddafi's son's election offer.

"We tell him (Saif al-Islam) that the time has passed because our rebels are at the outskirts of Tripoli, and they will join our people and rebels there to uproot the symbol of corruption and tyranny in Libya," rebel spokesman Abdel Hafiz Ghoga told .

A U.S. State Department official also dismissed the election idea, saying it was "a little late for that."

The proposal -- which follows a series of moves the Libyan leader's officials portray as concessions but Western powers dismiss as ploys -- comes at a time when frustration is mounting in some NATO states at slow military progress.

Rebel advances towards Tripoli have been slow, while weeks of NATO strikes pounding Gaddafi's compound and other targets have failed to end his 41-year-old rule.

In the latest raids, eight loud explosions were heard in southeast and southwest Tripoli late on Thursday and planes could be heard overhead. Libyan state television said NATO had hit targets in the Al-Ferjan district of the city.

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NATO strike kills civilians: Libya govt

  Libyan officials said some seven civilians were killed in a NATO air strike in eastern Tripoli in the early hours of Sunday morning.



"There was intentional and deliberate targeting of the civilian houses," deputy Foreign Minister Khaled Kaim told reporters at the site. "This is another sign of the brutality of the West."

There were heaps of rubble and chunks of shattered concrete at the scene, which a large crowd of what appeared to be local residents were helping to clear.

On previous occasions when reporters have been taken to see fresh air strikes, the ruins of shattered buildings would typically still be smoking so soon after being hit. There did not appear to be any smoke at the site the Libyan said was targeted by NATO on Sunday morning.

If confirmed, the incident would be a blow to NATO's campaign which is aiding rebels fighting the government of Muammar Gaddafi at a time when the Western alliance is debating how to sustain its mission.

At a local hospital, reporters were shown three bodies, including a child, which government officials said were people killed in the air strike.

One of the bodies was covered with debris and dust. Reporters were also shown a wounded child.

"Basically, this is another night of murder, terror and horror in Tripoli caused by NATO," government spokesman Moussa Ibrahim told  at the hospital. Five families were living in the building which was hit, he said.

It could not be immediately verified whether the three bodies had come from the destroyed building in the Arada district. Arada is a neighbourhood in the Souq al-Juma district, which is known for anti-Gaddafi sentiment.

Two weeks ago, Libyan government officials were accused by a staff member at the same hospital in a note passed to journalists of falsely labelling a child hurt in a car crash as the victim of a NATO attack.

The incident occurred just over 24 hours after the Libyan government accused NATO of specifically targeting civilians.

After four months of civil war, rebels control much of the east of Libya, the area around the western port city of Misrata and much of the Western Mountain region stretching to the border with Tunisia.

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NATO strikes Tripoli, Libyan rebels make gains

 
 NATO warplanes attacked Tripoli on Tuesday night after Libyan rebels pushed back forces loyal to leader Muammar Gaddafi on three fronts, bringing them closer to the capital. 


The strikes followed a lull in NATO bombing of Tripoli on Tuesday, but in the evening loud blasts rocked the city with plumes of smoke filling the sky to the east and aircraft flying overhead.




Libyan state TV said the bombs had struck military and civilian targets in Firnag, one of the most populated areas in the capital, and Ain Zara. It said there were casualties.



Earlier in the day rebels tried to advance in the east, setting their sights on the oil town of Brega to extend their control over the region, epicenter of the four-month rebellion against Gaddafi's four-decade rule. 




NATO defense chiefs met in Belgrade to discuss the mission, after Defense Secretary Robert Gates accused some European allies of failing to pull their weight. 




A senior NATO commander appeared to raise questions about the alliance's ability to handle a long-term intervention in Libya. 


"We are conducting this operation with all the means we have, and the best we can. If the operation were to last long, of course, the resource issue will become critical," General Stephane Abrial said. 


In a sign that Gaddafi forces may be getting stretched, the rebels seized the town of Kikla, 150 km (90 miles) southwest of Tripoli. They also pushed several kilometers west of their Misrata stronghold to the outskirts of government-held Zlitan.

NATO LEAFLET WARNING



A NATO leaflet drop warning of helicopter strikes prompted some rebels to retreat from their newly captured positions outside Zlitan.





A NATO official said the alliance did drop leaflets warning of the possibility of attack by helicopters, but said this was west of Misrata, and closer to Zlitan. 




Even without the threat of NATO attack, the rebels said they would not attack Zlitan, citing tribal sensitivities. Instead they would wait for the local inhabitants to rise up.



A NATO official said warplanes had hit an ammunition store at Waddan, not far from Al Jufrah, after Libyan television said Al Jufrah, in central Libya, had been bombed for a second day. 



Tunisia flew an F-5 warplane and a helicopter along its border with Libya after Libyan troops fired several rockets into Tunisia. 


The explosions, close to rebel territory in Libya's Western Mountains southwest of Tripoli, caused no damage or injuries. 





The rebels, who had been trying to seize Ryayna for several weeks, said two of their fighters had been killed, but they had taken prisoners, including foreign fighters. 

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Libyan rebels edge westwards out of Misrata

 

Libyan rebels edged slowly beyond their western stronghold of Misrata toward Tripoli, but faced supply shortages after shelling from Muammar Gaddafi forces hit a key refinery in the city. Any fighting over Zlitan would bring the rebellion closer to the capital Tripoli, the Libyan leader's stronghold which lies 200 km (124 miles) west of Misrata. A doctor in a field hospital to the west of Libya's third largest city said two rebels had been killed and a dozen wounded after the two sides traded heavy artillery fire. Rebels from Misrata say tribal sensitivities prevent them from attacking Zlitan, and they are instead waiting for local inhabitants to rise up. Late Monday, six rockets hit generators at the refinery near Misrata port leaving them heavily damaged. An engineer on site said it was unclear how long it would take to repair. The fighting east of Tripoli came during a lull in NATO bombardment of the Libyan capital. State television reported the alliance had bombarded targets in Al Jufrah in the center of the country. A rebel spokesman in Zintan, in the rebel-held Western Mountains range southwest of Tripoli, said the town had been quiet after being subjected to its heaviest bombardment by pro-Gaddafi forces in several weeks Sunday. "Today has been the quietest day for Zintan in three months, although we started to hear in the evening loud blasts coming from the east." he said. "We buried (on Monday) the 10 martyrs who were killed after Sunday's clashes."

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Battle for Libya oil town, fighting near Tripoli

Rebels fighting against Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi say they were repulsed by his forces in a battle to retake the eastern oil town of Brega, suffering at least four dead.

In the west, rebels said they were fighting Gaddafi's forces for a second day in the town of Zawiyah Sunday, bringing the revolt against his rule closer to the capital.

The rebels said they had lost at least four killed in fighting between Brega and Ajdabiyah. At least 65 fighters were wounded, doctors at the hospital in the rebel stronghold city of Benghazi said.

"We attacked them first but they attacked us back. We tried to get to Brega but that was difficult," Haithan Elgwei, a rebel fighter, said after returning from the front with the wounded.

"NATO (aircraft) were covering us from above but Gaddafi troops fired rockets and mortars outside Brega," Akram, 24, a wounded fighter, said.

"We will not retreat. We look forward to taking Tripoli," he added.

The fresh outbreak of fighting in Zawiyah, west of Tripoli and home to a big oil refinery, marks the closest the armed rebellion has come to Gaddafi's stronghold in the capital for months.

Reporters taken by the government to see Zawiyah, which saw intense fighting at the start of the anti-Gaddafi uprising in February and has changed hands several times, found it eerily quiet Sunday, with almost no one in sight.

Saturday, Libyan government spokesman Moussa Ibrahim said there was "no serious fighting" there.

Sunday, he told reporters that no more than 100 rebel fighters who had attacked to the west of the city were holed up after suffering losses and the government was trying to negotiate their surrender.

"They were defeated after a few hours of scattered skirmishes with the army," he added.

Not long after the reporters left Zawiyah, rebel spokesman M'hamed Ezzawi said by phone there was heavy fighting 400 m (yards) from the main square.

"The brigades are using heavy weapons. They are better equipped than the revolutionaries," he said. "We have no statistics so far as to the number of martyrs but there are at least seven wounded among the revolutionaries."

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Gaddafi offered exit deal

Turkey has offered Muammar Gaddafi guarantees to leave Libya but has yet to receive a reply, as rebels say loyalist forces killed 20 people in a fierce assault on Misrata.
Fresh Nato-led strikes sent up plumes of smoke Friday in Tripoli, where the strongman has his residence and headquarters.
But in Brussels, US Defence Secretary Robert Gates warned the Western alliance's air war on forces loyal to Gaddafi could be in peril because of military shortcomings.
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said his government had offered exit "guarantees" to the embattled Libyan leader, whom rebels have been trying to oust since February following a bloody crackdown on pro-reform protests.
Gaddafi "has no other option than to leave Libya - with a guarantee to be given to him," Erdogan said on NTV television.
"We have given him this guarantee. We have told him we will help him to be sent wherever he wants to go," he added, without elaborating.
"Depending on the reply we will get from him, we will take up the issue with our (Nato) allies, but unfortunately we have received no reply so far."
His comments came after a day of deadly fighting near the port city of Misrata, the rebels' most significant enclave in western Libya, some 200 kilometres from Tripoli.
Beaten back loyalists
Gaddafi's forces had bombarded the Dafnia area on Misrata's outskirts with Grad rockets, heavy artillery and tank shells, a rebel said.
"Twenty people, both civilians and rebels, were killed and more than 80 wounded," in the sector, 35km from Misrata city centre, he added.
But they had beaten back an attack by loyalist troops, leaving "dead and wounded among the Gaddafi forces," he said.
In the Libyan capital Tripoli, two loud blasts were heard at about 15:00 (13:00 GMT), coming from the eastern suburbs of Tajura and Ain Zara, residents told AFP.
Three powerful explosions shook the city centre at around midnight. Other more distant blasts followed.
Tripoli has over the past two days been subjected to the most intense Nato air raids since the international military campaign was launched on March 19 under a UN mandate to protect Libyan civilians.
In Paris, Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi's daughter Aisha filed a second war crimes complaint against Nato and France over air strikes that killed family members, including three infants, her lawyer said.
In Moscow, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev's special envoy Mikhail Margelov said he would be visiting Tripoli to try to find a solution to the conflict, having met the opposition in their Benghazi stronghold.
Half of Nato out
Thursday saw a surge of support for the rebels battling to oust Gaddafi at a meeting in Abu Dhabi of the International Contact Group on Libya.
Key powers agreed to unlock a billion dollars for their coffers, and the United States joined Australia and Spain in recognising the rebels National Transitional Council (NTC) as Libya's legitimate representative.
Gates, the Pentagon chief, expressed concern on Friday with half of the countries in the 28-member Nato alliance not participating in the Libya campaign, many simply did not have the wherewithal.
"Frankly, many of those allies sitting on the sidelines do so not because they do not want to participate, but simply because they cannot," Gates said.
"The military capabilities simply aren't there."
Norway, which has contributed six F-16 fighters, said however that it would first reduce its participation before pulling out altogether on August 1.
And Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said that while his country supported a three-month extension of the Nato air campaign, its six F-16s would not fly bombing missions.
US Senator Carl Levin, head of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said later that Gaddafi's forces had been "severely degraded" and the Nato operation was "going well", following a briefing from Pentagon officials.
Gaddafi sent a letter to the US Congress praising its criticism of President barack obama over libya.
"What does it stand for? Does it mean that media has reported repeatedly? Does this constitute hyste

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Western, Arab talks to focus on Libya 'endgame'

MISRATA - Western and Arab nations meet in Abu Dhabi on Thursday to focus on what one U.S. official called the "endgame" for Libya's Muammar Gaddafi as NATO once again stepped up the intensity of its air raids on Tripoli.

At the United Nations, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) said its investigators had found evidence linking Gaddafi to a policy of raping opponents, while in the U.S. Congress a bipartisan group proposed that President Barack Obama use frozen Libyan government assets to pay for humanitarian aid for Libyan people caught up in the civil war.

NATO air strikes resumed in Tripoli on Wednesday night after a lull that followed the heaviest day of bombings since March.

Thousands of Gaddafi troops advanced on Misrata on Wednesday, shelling it from three sides and killing at least 12 rebels.

Ministers from the so-called Libya contact group, including the United States, France and Britain, as well as Arab allies Qatar, Kuwait and Jordan, agreed in May to set up a fund to help the rebels in the civil war.

They are expected to firm up this commitment in the United Arab Emirates capital and press the rebels to give a detailed plan on how they would run the country if Gaddafi stood down as leader of the oil producing North African desert state.

"The international community is beginning to talk about what could constitute end-game to this," one senior U.S. official told reporters aboard U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's plane which landed in Abu Dhabi on Wednesday night.

"That would obviously include some kind of ceasefire arrangement and some kind of political process... and of course the question of Gaddafi and perhaps his family is also a key part of that," the U.S. official said.

Both Libya's rebel Transitional National Council (TNC) and its Western allies have rejected Libyan government ceasefire offers that do not include Gaddafi's departure, saying he and his family must relinquish power before any talks can begin.

The U.S. official said there have been general discussions about what might happen to Gaddafi but nothing specific on "where he should go, or whether he should remain in Libya for
that matter."

U.S. officials on Wednesday announced delivery of the TNC's first U.S oil sale, part of a broader strategy they hope will get money flowing to the cash starved group.

U.S. oil refiner Tesoro announced in May it had purchased the 1.2 million barrel cargo, which U.S. officials said was due to arrive in Hawaii on Wednesday aboard a tanker chartered by Swiss oil trader Vitol.

'Pressure will increase'

British Foreign Office Minister Alistair Burt, who will be at the Abu Dhabi talks, said the group would be briefed by the International Stabilisation Response Team which is helping the rebel council plan for post-conflict rebuilding.

"The contact group will also reiterate the unequivocal message... that Gaddafi, his family and his regime have lost all legitimacy and must go so that the Libyan people can determine their own future," Burt said.

"Until Gaddafi does so, the pressure will increase across the board: economically, politically and militarily."

NATO defence ministers met in Brussels on Wednesday, but there were few signs of willingness to intensify their Libya mission, which after four months has failed to oust Gaddafi.

The alliance says the bombing aims to protect civilians from the Libyan leader's military, which crushed popular protests against his rule in February, leaving many dead. The conflict has now become a civil war.

Gaddafi says the rebels are a minority of Islamist militants and the NATO campaign is an attempt to grab Libya's oil.

At the United Nations, the ICC prosecutor said its investigators have evidence linking Gaddafi to a policy of raping opponents and may bring separate charges on the issue.

Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo requested arrest warrants on May 16 against Gaddafi, his son Saif al-Islam and the country's spy chief on charges of crimes against humanity committed during attempts to crush the country's rebellion.

At a U.N. news conference on Wednesday, he said the question until recently had been whether Gaddafi himself could be associated with the rapes "or is it something that happened in the barracks?"

"But now we are getting some information that Gaddafi himself decided" to authorize the rapes, "and this is new," Moreno-Ocampo said.

In Washington, a group of leading Senate Democrats and Republicans said they were sponsoring a bill under which President Obama could use frozen Libyan government assets to pay for humanitarian aid to Libyan people caught up in the conflict.

"The ongoing violence in Libya has disrupted the economy and left far too many innocent Libyan citizens struggling to simply put food on the table and to manage the daily necessities of life," Banking Committee Chairman Tim Johnson said in a joint statement with the committee's senior Republican, Richard Shelby.

The United States is holding more than $34 billion as part of sanctions imposed in late February against Gaddafi and his top officials.

Gaddfi push on Misrata

On the battlefront, forces loyal to Gaddafi were staging a big push on Misrata. "He has sent thousands of troops from all sides and they are trying to enter the city. They are still outside, though," rebel spokesman Hassan al-Misrati told Reuters from inside the besieged town.

Another rebel spokesman in Misrata, called Mohammed, told Reuters late on Wednesday they were still in control of the city despite the assault.

Spain joined other Western and Arab governments in recognizing the Benghazi-based council as the sole representative of the Libyan people.

Gaddafi troops and the rebels have been deadlocked for weeks, with neither side able to hold territory on a road between Ajdabiyah in the east, which Gaddafi forces shelled on Monday, and the Gaddafi-held oil town of Brega further west.

Rebels control the east of Libya, the western city of Misrata and the range of western mountains near the border with Tunisia. They have been unable to advance on the capital against Gaddafi's better-equipped forces.

In Tripoli, a fire broke out early on Thursday morning at the hotel housing foreign journalists, a Reuters witness said.

About 100 people, most of them journalists, were evacuated to the parking lot just before 6 a.m. (0400 GMT). There were no reports of injuries and a government spokesman said hotel staff blamed the blaze on a fire in an electrical room.

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