The Daily Blog

Saif Al-Arab Gaddafi, Libya Leader’s Son, Killed By NATO Airstrike: Spokesman.

(Reuters) - Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi survived a NATO airstrike on Saturday night that killed his youngest son Saif al-Arab and three of his grandchildren, a Libyan government spokesman said.

Mussa Ibrahim said Saif al-Arab was a civilian and a student who had studied in Germany. He was 29 years old.

Libyan officials took journalists to the house, which had been hit by at least three missiles. The roof had completely caved in in some areas, leaving strings of reinforcing steel hanging down among chunks of concrete.

A table football machine stood outside in the garden of the house, which was in a wealthy residential area of Tripoli.

Envoy Says Gadhafi Seeking End to Libya Crisis.

BENGHAZI, Libya - An envoy of Moammar Gadhafi told Greece’s prime minister Sunday that the Libyan leader was seeking a way out of his country’s crisis two weeks after his government’s attacks to put down a rebellion drew international airstrikes, Greek officials said.

Abdul-Ati al-Obeidi, a former Libyan prime minister who has served as a Gadhafi envoy during the crisis, will travel next to Turkey and Malta in a sign that Gadhafi’s regime may be softening its hard line in the face of the sustained attacks.”From the Libyan envoy’s comments it appears that the regime is seeking a solution,” Greek Foreign Minister Dimitris Droutsas said in a statement after the meeting in Athens.

The foreign minister said the Greek side stressed the international community’s call for Libya to comply with the U.N. resolution that authorized the airstrikes and demanded Gadhafi and the rebels end hostilities.

The message, Droutsas said, was: “Full respect and implementation of the United Nations decisions, an immediate cease-fire, an end to violence and hostilities, particularly against the civilian population of Libya.”

Gadhafi’s government has declared several cease-fires but has not abided by them.

Few other details of the Athens talks were released publicly.On Friday, the Libyan envoy had said Gadhafi’s government was attempting to hold talks with the U.S., Britain and France in an effort to halt the international airstrikes that began March 19 and which have pounded Libya’s troops and armor and grounded its air force.

Gadhafi’s superior forces had been close to taking the rebel capital of Benghazi in eastern Libya before the international military campaign.

Rebel forces made up of defected army units and armed civilians have since seized much of Libya’s eastern coast, but have been unable to push westward toward the capital, Tripoli.

On Sunday, Gadhafi’s forces pressed on with attacks against Misrata, the last key city in the western half of the country still largely under rebel control despite a weeks-long assault.

Government troops besieged civilian areas for around two hours Sunday morning with Grad rockets and mortar shells and lined a main street with snipers, said a doctor in the city.

Two shells landed on a field hospital, killing one person and injuring 11, he said. The attacks, including tank fire, began again after nightfall, he said. He did not want to be identified by name out of fear for his security.

A Turkish ship carrying 250 wounded from Misrata docked in Benghazi Sunday. The boat, which carried medical supplies, was also expected to pick up around 60 wounded people being treated in various hospitals in Benghazi, as well as 30 Turks and 40 people from Greece, Ukraine, Britain, Uzbekistan, Germany and Finland.

A leader of the rebel movement, meanwhile, sought to ease concerns from Western governments about its character and goals, emphasizing in an interview that the rebels will not allow Islamic extremists to hijack their plans to install a parliamentary democracy in place of Gadhafi’s four-decade rule.

The issue takes on added importance as Western officials debate whether to send the rebels weaponry in an attempt to help them gain the upper hand over Gadhafi’s superior troops.

“Libyans as a whole - and I am one of them - want a civilian democracy, not dictatorship, not tribalism and not one based on violence or terrorism,” said Abdel-Hafidh Ghoga, vice chairman of the opposition’s National Provisional Council.

The council, based in Benghazi, was formed to represent the opposition in the eastern Libyan cities that shook off control of the central government in a series of popular uprisings that began Feb. 15.

In Washington, the chairman of the Intelligence Committee in the House of Representatives was among several key lawmakers cautioning that the U.S. and its allies needed to know much more about the rebel forces before providing them with weapons.

Mike Rogers, a Republican from Michigan, said on NBC television’s “Meet the Press” that there may be strains of al-Qaida within the rebel ranks and the NATO-led coalition in the campaign against Gadhafi should proceed with caution before arming them.

Libya’s opposition has said any extremists among their ranks would be few in number, and Gadhafi’s own punishing campaigns crushed Islamic militants in the country years ago.

British Foreign Secretary William Hague said Sunday that his country would neither arm the rebels nor send ground troops to Libya.

“We have taken no decision to arm the rebels, the opposition, the pro-democracy people - whatever one wants to call them,” he told the BBC.

A British diplomatic team arrived Saturday in the rebels’ de facto capital of Benghazi to speak to members of the opposition council to learn more about their aims, British officials said Sunday.

Other fighting Sunday was concentrated around the strategic oil town of Brega, as it has been repeatedly during weeks of back-and-forth battling along Libya’s eastern coast. The rebels, backed by airstrikes, made incremental advances.

Rebels fired truck-mounted rocket launchers, then moved to avoid government counter-strikes, suggesting improving tactics and training.In Tripoli, an opposition supporter said Sunday that anxiety was spreading in areas of the capital as dozens of people disappear in pre-dawn raids, apparently carried out by Gadhafi’s security apparatus.

“They pick them up from their houses and they disappear. We don’t know if they’re still alive or dead,” said the activist who spoke on condition he not be identified to avoid arrest.

He also described the city as being locked down, saying many people were staying at home, shops were closed and hundreds of cars were lining up for hours at gas stations as people hoard supplies.

The U.S. was to have stopped flying strike missions in Libya as of Sunday after it passed control of the air operation to NATO last week. But alliance spokeswoman Oana Lungescu said the U.S. approved a request to extend that role until Monday because of “poor weather conditions over the last few days.” She did not elaborate.

Libyan Woman Claims Rape By Soldiers, Is Dragged Away.

TRIPOLI, Libya — A distraught Libyan woman stormed into a Tripoli hotel Saturday to tell foreign reporters that government troops raped her, setting off a brawl when hotel staff and government minders tried to detain her.

Iman al-Obeidi was tackled by waitresses and government minders as she sat telling her story to journalists after she rushed into the restaurant at the Rixos hotel where a number of foreign journalists were eating breakfast.

She claimed loudly that troops had detained her a checkpoint, tied her up, abused her, then led her away to be gang raped.

Her story could not be independently verified, but the dramatic scene provided a rare firsthand glimpse of the brutal crackdown on public dissent by Moammar Gadhafi’s regime as the Libyan leader fights a rebellion against his rule that began last month.

The regime has been keeping up a drumbeat of propaganda in the Tripoli-centered west of the country under its control even as it faces a weeklong international air campaign against the Libyan military.

At a hastily arranged press conference after the incident, government spokesman Moussa Ibrahim said investigators had told him the woman was drunk and possibly mentally challenged.

Before she was dragged out of the hotel, al-Obeidi managed to tell journalists that she was detained by a number of troops at a Tripoli checkpoint on Wednesday. She said they were drinking whiskey and handcuffed her. She said 15 men later raped her.

“They tied me up … they even defecated and urinated on me,” she said, her face streaming with tears. “The Gadhafi militiamen violated my honor.”

The woman, who appeared in her 30’s, wore a black robe and a floral scarf around her neck and identified herself. She had scratches on her face and she pulled up her black robe to reveal a bloodied thigh. She said neighbors in the area where she was detained helped her escape.

The Associated Press only identifies rape victims who volunteer their names.

As al-Obeidi spoke, a hotel waitress brandished a butter knife, a government minder reached for his handgun and another waitress pulled a jacket tightly over her head.

Al-Obeidi said she was targeted by the troops because she’s from the eastern city of Benghazi, a rebel stronghold.

The waiters called her a traitor and told her to shut up. She retorted: “Easterners – we’re all Libyan brothers, we are supposed to be treated the same, but this is what the Gadhafi militiamen did to me, they violated my honor.”

It soon turned into a scene of chaos with journalists attempting to protect the woman from government minders who physically attacked and intimidated her.

Journalists who tried to intervene were pushed out of the way by the minders. A British television reporter was punched, and CNN’s camera was smashed on the ground and ripped to pieces by the government minders.

Eventually the minders overpowered the woman and led her outside, shoving her into a car that sped away. Al-Obeidi kept crying that she was certain she would be thrown in jail. She begged photographers to take her picture, raising her robe to show them her bruised body. A minder tried to cover her mouth with his hand to keep her from talking.

“Look at what happens – Gadhafi’s militiamen kidnap women at gunpoint, and rape them … they rape them,” al-Obeidi screamed.

She said she wanted to be taken to see the leader himself.

“I want to see Moammar Gadhafi. Didn’t he say that every victim will have justice? I want my rights,” she said.

The government spokesman said the woman was under investigation.

“The investigators did phone me and told me the lady is drunk and that she seems to be suffering mentally,” Ibrahim said. “They are checking on her health condition, her mental condition, whether she was really abused or if these were fantasies.”

Gadhafi’s crackdown has been the region’s most violent against the wave of anti-government protests sweeping the Middle East. Tensions have been rising between foreign reporters in the Libyan capital and the government minders who have sought to tightly control what they see and whom they talk to. Most of the international press corps is being housed at the Rixos hotel.

President Obama to Libya’s Moammar Gadhafi: ‘The Violence Must Stop’.

Global condemnation of the increasingly violent regime of Moammar Gadhafi gives the United States a green light to intervene against the Libyan dictator, and President Obama Wednesday asked his top national security staff to draw up a list of options.

They could range from armed U.S. combat air patrols to shut down Gadhafi’s military operations to freezing Gadhafi’s bank accounts and other punitive sanctions.

In his first public response to the Libyan crisis since Friday, Obama said the “suffering and bloodshed is outrageous and is unacceptable.” And echoing past commanders-in-chief who have issued ultimatums before taking action, Obama declared in a brief statement at the White House Wednesday evening: “This violence must stop.”It showed no sign of stopping. In the Libyan capital of Tripoli, armed pro-Gadhafi thugs and mercenaries attacked demonstrators Wednesday in violence that has killed as many as 1,000 people and injured many more across the country, according to accounts gathered by Human Rights Watch and other organizations.

But Gadhafi’s military continued to crumble. The two-man crew of an SU-22 strike fighter sent to bomb demonstrators in the eastern city of Benghazi Wednesday flew over the city and ejected safely, according to accounts from Libyan newspapers taken over by demonstrators.

Benghazi, along with Tobruk and other eastern Libyan cities, were reported to be controlled by demonstrators along with defecting units of the Libyan security forces. The western Libyan city of Misurata was taken over by anti-Gadhafi demonstrators, and army officers stationed there issued a statement pledging “total support for the protesters,” al Jazeera reported Wednesday.
White House officials said Obama had been reluctant to intervene publicly as the Libyan crisis intensified for fear of jeopardizing the safety of thousands of Americans and tens of thousands of Europeans and Asians stuck in Libya. “We are doing everything we can to protect American citizens,” Obama said Wednesday. “That is my highest priority.” A huge ferry sent to evacuate Americans from Tripoli was held up there temporarily Wednesday night because of bad weather. Tripoli’s international airport was virtually shut down, authorities said.British Foreign Secretary William Hague said many Europeans were stranded in Tripoli with no way to leave. He described the security situation there as “worsening” and said there were “many indications of the structure of the state collapsing.”

Even as crowds of American families waited to be carried to safety, Obama was said to be encouraged by the strong positions against Gadhafi taken by the U.N. Security Council, the European Union, the Arab League, the African Union, the Organization of the Islamic Conference, and other international organizations.

“The world is watching,” Obama declared. He said the Libyan government “must be held accountable” for violating international norms and “every standard of common decency.”

Human rights, including the right to free speech, freedom of peaceful assembly and the right to determine one’s own destiny, “are not negotiable,” the president said.

To back up his strong words, Obama said he has asked his staff “to prepare the full range of options that we have to respond to this crisis,” including both unilateral operations and actions that could be taken in concert with others or through international organizations such as the United Nations.

U.S. air combat patrols over Libya could be flown by squadrons based in Europe. The aircraft carrier USS Enterprise is in the north Arabian Sea and would require a transit through the Suez Canal. The U.S. mounted similar operations over Iraq, in Operation Southern Watch, for 12 years before the 2003 invasion, flying continuously to deter Saddam Hussein and to degrade Iraq’s air defenses.

The Su-22 jets flown by Libya’s air force are more than four decades old and are no match for American aircraft. Two Su-22s were shot down by Navy F-14s in a confrontation over Libya’s Gulf of Sidra in 1981.

Some analysts suggested that Gadhafi might attempt to sabotage the Libyan oil fields in a final act of fury. One option for the United States would be to assist an international, or Arab, security and operations force to protect the oil facilities.

It also seemed likely that the United States, acting under U.N. Security Council authority, would enact economic sanctions and banking restrictions on Gadhafi and members of his family and immediate entourage.