Gaddafi hometown bombed, rebels poised to attack

[1]

British warplanes bombed a bunker in Muammar Gaddafi's birthplace of Sirte as rebel fighters prepared Friday to attack the town, one of the last major regime holdouts east of Tripoli.

As insurgent leaders moved into Tripoli to begin a political transition, the African Union called for that process to be ‘inclusive’.

And the UN human rights chief warned against assassinating Gaddafi, whose whereabouts are unknown and who has a $1.7 million rebel price on his head.

Rebels capture Ras Jdir

On the ground, the rebels claimed a new military success on Friday with the capture of Ras Jdir, a post on the border with Tunisia, which it was feared Gaddafi might use to escape Libya. A Tunisian government official said Gaddafi loyalists fled as more than 100 rebels arrived at Ras Jdir and raised their flag.

A representative of the rebel National Transitional Council (NTC) said on Tunisian television from Ras Jdir that four pro-Gaddafi fighters surrendered.

On the Sirte front, "A formation of Tornado GR4s... fired a salvo of Storm Shadow precision-guided missiles against a large headquarters bunker in Gaddafi's hometown" on Thursday night, Britain's defence ministry said.

Speculation that Gaddafi might have found refuge in the town, which lies 360 kilometres (225 miles) east of Tripoli, has not been confirmed.

Gaddafi controls ‘limited places’

NATO said on Friday its planes had hit 29 armed vehicles and a ‘command and control node’ near Sirte as they advanced toward the rebel-held port of Misrata, about 140 kilometres away.

Regime forces in Sirte have been regularly targeted since the start of the campaign, an official said, but now ‘it's one of the last places he (Gaddafi) has control of’.

"It has always been a stronghold of the regime and now the remnants of the regime are using it to launch attacks," the official said. "This is an extremely desperate and dangerous remnant of a former regime and they are obviously desperately trying to disrupt the fact that the Libyan people have started to take responsibility for their own country."

On Thursday, the NTC moved many of its top figures from their Benghazi base to the capital, just days after rebel fighters overran Tripoli and captured Gaddafi's headquarters.

NTC official Ali Tarhuni said their leader, Mustafa Abdel Jalil, would arrive as soon as the security situation permitted.

Rebels hope to capture Gaddafi soon

Abdel Nagib Mlegta, head of operations for the takeover of the capital, said his fighters now controlled 95 percent of Tripoli, with just a few pockets of resistance left. They hoped to control Tripoli fully and capture Gaddafi within 72 hours.

Mlegta alleged that forces loyal to Gaddafi killed more than 150 prisoners with grenades in a ‘mass murder’ as they fled the rebel takeover.

But Amnesty International said on Friday that both sides had been guilty of abuses.

The rebels want to find Gaddafi so they can proclaim final victory in an uprising that began six months ago and was all but crushed by government forces before NATO warplanes gave crucial air support.

Do not kill Gaddafi: UN

In Geneva, the UN human rights chief warned bounty hunters who may be seeking to kill Gaddafi, saying assassinations are "not within the rule of law."

"That applies to Gaddafi as well as everybody else," said spokesman Rupert Colville in a response to a question about the reward for Khadafi, dead or alive. Colville said the ‘best solution’ would be to capture Gaddafi alive and follow through on an International Criminal Court (ICC) arrest warrant for suspected crimes against humanity.

No doctors in hospital, patients die

With fighting continuing in a conflict that the NTC chief says has killed more than 20,000 people, the horror of the situation was highlighted at a hospital in Tripoli.

Eighty putrefying corpses lay around, apparently patients who died for lack of treatment because doctors had fled for fear of the pro-Gaddafi snipers in the neighbourhood.

Only 17 survived and were evacuated Friday by the Red Cross.

Rebels in need of funding

As the rebels worked to consolidate their gains politically, they were still desperately in need of funding.

NTC number two Mahmud Jibril said in Istanbul on Friday it was essential that the West release all of Libya's frozen assets for the success of the new government to be established after the Gaddafi regime."

Warning of ‘high expectations’ of the new rulers, he told a press conference: "Salaries of civil servants need to be paid. The life needs to continue on its normal course." On Thursday, senior diplomats of the Libya Contact Group agreed to speed up release of some $2.5 billion in frozen Libyan assets by the middle of next week.

$1.5 billion for Libya from UN

At the same time, the UN Security Council released $1.5 billion of seized assets to be used for emergency aid. "The money will be moving within days," a US diplomat said.

EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton warned that funds being released should not end up in the hands of Gaddafi loyalists.