*As Search for Ghaddafi continues
By News Wires
The Libyan capital of Tripoli faced
severe water and food shortages Saturday as the country's transitional authorities
turned their attention to Sirte, Muammar Gaddafi's hometown, which they vowed
to take by force should negotiations fail.
Tripoli struggled with collapsing water and power supplies
on Saturday as rebels now in control of most of the Libyan capital vowed to
take Muammar Gaddafi’s home town by force if negotiations failed.
More evidence emerged of summary
killings during the battle for Tripoli, which erupted a week ago.
A correspondent for Britain’s Sky
News said he had counted about 53 bodies left in a burned-out warehouse, where
they were apparently executed earlier this week.
“It is a scene of mass murder,”
Stuart Ramsay said at the scene, quoting witnesses as saying 150 people were
killed there on Aug. 23 and 24 as rebel fighters fought pro-Gaddafi forces.
A local resident told Sky the
victims were mostly civilians and had been killed by Gaddafi’s forces.
Reports of cold-blooded killings by
both sides have surfaced in the last few days, darkening the atmosphere in a
city where many residents had greeted Gaddafi’s fall with joy.
Gaddafi’s own whereabouts remain
unknown—rebels hunting him say the war will not end until the 69-year-old
colonel who kept Libya in his grip for 42 years is captured or killed.
Mustafa Abdel Jalil, head of the
rebel National Transitional Council (NTC), told reporters in Benghazi: “We have
no factual report about the whereabouts of Gaddafi and his sons.”
The NTC, which has told its fighters
not to carry out revenge killings, is trying to assert its authority and
restore order in Tripoli but its top officials have yet to move there from
their Benghazi headquarters in the east.
Rebel commanders are still
negotiating with Gaddafi loyalists to try to persuade them to surrender control
over the coastal city of Sirte, Gaddafi’s home town, Abdel Jalil said.
Libya is effectively cut in two by
pro-Gaddafi forces holding territory stretching southwards from Sirte, 450 km
(300 miles) east of the capital, deep into the desert.
A rebel commander said forces advancing
from the east had reached the edge of Bin Jawad, a town about 140 km from
Sirte.
“We are waiting for the people in
Sirte to come out and talk but we’ve got no answer up to now. I’ve been waiting
for three days,” the commander, Fawzi Bukatif, told Reuters, adding that Sirte
must be taken eventually by force or peaceful means.
With rebel forces approaching from
east and west, Gaddafi loyalists in Sirte could retreat into the desert and try
to reach Sabha, another Gaddafi stronghold far to the south.
“If they pull south to Sabha, we’ll
follow them. We’re determined to clear the whole country,” said Bukatif.
The rebels, still a long way from
Sirte, have been using artillery backed by NATO air strikes on the town.
Behind rebel lines, shelling
subsided but two small fires burned in the distance, giving off black, oily
smoke. An ambulance raced away from the front, and rebels in a few trucks drove
through a checkpoint, flashing victory signs.
Far to the west, rebels were in
control of the border post of Ras Jdir after clashing with pro-Gaddafi forces
on Friday, but there was almost no traffic through what is usually a lifeline
for food, fuel and medical supplies for Tripoli.
Rebels there said this was partly
due to rearguard attacks by Gaddafi’s soldiers and partly to roadblocks manned
by pro-Gaddafi tribesmen on the Tunisian side of the border.
“It’s the Al-Shusha tribe, the
Hawamid tribe, they love Gaddafi and are stopping the traffic, smashing cars
and beating families,” said Walid Suleiman, 31, a rebel fighter.
NTC spokesman Mahmoud Shammam
reported attacks near Zawara, about 160 km west of Tripoli. “The Gaddafi
brigades are shelling the road, but we hope to be able to control it today,” he
said.
The NTC and the Western powers that
backed rebel forces with a five-month bombing campaign are acutely aware of the
need to prevent Libya collapsing into the kind of chaos that plagued Iraq for
years after the U.S.-led invasion of 2003.
Life remains far from normal in
Tripoli, whose two million people are grappling with a breakdown in basic
services, even as many of them celebrate the overthrow of a hated leader.
In one hospital, wounded patients
lay on bare mattresses in bloodsoaked bandages amid a stench of blood and
sweat. None was on an intravenous drip, although many had lost blood.
“There are widespread shortages of
fuel, food and medical supplies, particularly in the Nafusa Mountains and
Tripoli,” U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in New York.
Tripoli’s supply problems have
worsened, even though NTC chairman Mustafa Abdel Jalil said on Thursday his
forces had discovered huge stockpiles of food and medicine in the capital that
would eliminate any shortfalls.
NTC spokesman Shammam said the
council wanted staff at the National Oil Corporation, the de facto energy
ministry, to get back to work and tackle shortages of petrol, fuel oil and gas.
He said diesel and cooking gas
cargoes were on the way and that talks had taken place at the Zawiyah refinery
to discuss ways to supply western Libya with gas and restart the refinery.
Mountains of rubbish
In Tripoli, stinking garbage was
piled high in the streets. In some districts, people set it on fire to stave
off disease.
Electricity and running water were
scarce. Residents carried containers to mosques, which often have wells, hoping
to fill up. Outside one mosque, a sign read: "No water left."
In Abu Salim, bullet casings
littered a square. About 50 charred cars dotted the neighbourhood.
Dozens of decomposing bodies still
lay in and around a hospital in Abu Salim that was abandoned by medical staff
during the fighting. It was not clear how they had died.
Five bloated bodies lay on trolleys
at the entrance to the emergency department, while 25 lay in the garden,
wrapped in rugs and sprinkled with lime in a vain attempt to keep down the
smell. Surgical masks and gloves were scattered on the ground. Ambulances were
still parked in front of the hospital.
The rebel council is pressing
foreign powers to release Libyan funds frozen abroad to help it restore
security, provide services and revive the economy after six months of conflict.
The United States and South Africa
struck a deal on Thursday to allow the release of $1.5 billion in frozen Libya
funds for humanitarian aid and other civilian needs.
But Gaddafi’s long-time allies in
Africa offered him a grain of comfort on Friday by refusing to follow Arab and
Western powers in recognising the NTC as the legal government.
South African President Jacob Zuma,
a vocal advocate for Gaddafi, said the African Union could have prevented
deaths in Libya if it had been given the chance.
“We still believe that had the AU
been allowed space to work, heavy loss of life would have been averted,” he
said in a statement a day after chairing an AU meeting in Addis Ababa.
Many Libyans are eager to seal the
victory of a popular uprising that was inspired by those in neighbouring Egypt
and Tunisia by seeing the deposed leader dead or behind bars.
“We hope we can catch Gaddafi and if
we do I would like him to be put in a cage in the zoo with the animals, him and
his family,” said Wajdi Ramadan, 30, a wounded fighter.
source:France24
source:France24
