HARAWA, Libya, March 28, (Agencies): Libyan rebels were stopped in their tracks on Monday as forces loyal to Muammar Gaddafi launched a fierce attack on their convoy, halting their push forward to Sirte for a second time in the day. The rebels came under heavy fire at the village of Harawa, some 60 kms (35 miles) short of Gaddafi’s birthplace. French journalists at the scene, who escaped unhurt, reported at least two casualties and several rebel pick-up trucks destroyed in the assault. Artillery fire continued for half-an-hour, the journalists said, halting the rebels’ progress.

After their rapid progress on Sunday, helped by overnight coalition air raids, Monday proved something of a sticking point and earlier in the day, their advance westwards towards Tripoli was halted about 140 kms (85 miles) east of Sirte but later resumed. Ahead of an international conference in London on Tuesday, Britain and France called for supporters of the Libyan leader to abandon him “before it’s too late” and insisted the rebel National Transitional Council and civil society leaders should help a Libyan transition towards democracy, saying Gaddafi must go immediately. US President Barack Obama was due to address the nation on the conflict later in the day and was expected to tell Americans that the assault on Libya averted a humanitarian “catastrophe”. Libyan forces loyal to Muammar Gaddafi have ended their onslaught on rebel-held Misrata and “calm” has been restored, the foreign ministry announced, without clearly indicating whether the town is now back under loyalist control.

Opposition representatives in Benghazi, meanwhile, were trying to form a government-in-waiting.
At present, the official voice of Libya’s opposition rests with the so-called Provisional Transitional National Council (PTNC), a group of 31 members representing the country’s major cities and towns.
Life returned to something like normal in Benghazi but the insurgents say it will not become the capital of a rebel state — their aim is to take Tripoli and rule over a unified, post-Gaddafi Libya.
On Sunday, the rebels had seized Bin Jawad after retaking the key oil town of Ras Lanuf as they advanced with the support of coalition air strikes on Gaddafi’s forces.
But on Monday they came under heavy machine-gun fire from regime loyalists in pick-up trucks on the road from Bin Jawad to Nofilia.

The insurgents pulled back into Bin Jawad and opened up with heavy artillery.
Pick-ups flying the green flag of Tripoli and mounted with heavy machine guns opened up on the rebels who replied with multiple rocket launchers and cannon fire.
A 10-minute incoming artillery barrage panicked the thousand or so rebels along the road outside Bin Jawad, sending them fleeing in disorder.
“It won’t be as easy as we thought to take Sirte and then march on Tripoli,” said 20-year-old rebel fighter Ahmad al-Badri, wearing incomplete battledress and clutching an old Kalashnikov.
“But we won’t stop — we’ll advance. They can’t hold us up for long,” Badri added.
All of the rebels who spoke to AFP expressed confidence that coalition warplanes would reopen the road to Sirte for them, but none had heard of NATO’s decision to strike only when civilians were threatened by Gaddafi’s army.

Later in the day, the advance continued cautiously as the rebels searched houses along the road and appeared to encounter diminishing resistance from Gaddafi loyalists.
An AFP reporter said nine powerful explosions rocked Sirte early on Monday, as warplanes flew overhead and the coalition operation to enforce a no-fly zone in Libya entered its ninth day.
The explosions, between 0420 GMT and 0435 GMT, followed two loud blasts on Sunday evening blamed by state television on an air raid by coalition forces.
British jets bombed ammunition bunkers in the south early on Monday after weekend strikes took out a score of tanks and armoured vehicles near the towns of Ajdabiya and Misrata, the defence ministry said in London.

Tornado GR4s flying from Britain and refuelled mid-air conducted strike missions against ammunition bunkers in Gaddafi’s southern stronghold of Sebha.
NATO has finally taken over enforcing a no-fly zone and flew its first enforcement mission over Libya on Sunday in the operation codenamed “Unified Protector”.
Officials cautioned, however, that the transfer of command would take 48 to 72 hours.
“Our goal is to protect civilians and civilian-populated areas under threat of attack from the Gaddafi regime,” said NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen.
“NATO will implement all aspects of the UN resolution. Nothing more, nothing less,” he said.
The command transfer came as Tripoli also came under attack by what state television called “the colonial aggressor”.

UN Security Council Resolution 1973, adopted earlier this month, authorised military action to protect Libyan civilians.
Witnesses in the capital said the strikes targeted the road to the airport 10 kms (6 miles) outside the city, as well as the Ain Zara neighbourhood on its eastern outskirts.
State news agency JANA reported that coalition warplanes had also launched a dawn air raid on residential areas of Gaddafi’s southern stronghold of Sebha.
“Crusader forces bombed residential districts of Sebha at dawn, damaging homes and causing several casualties,” the news agency said, without giving a toll.
Qatar on Monday became the second nation, after France, to recognise the PTNC as the “sole legitimate representative” of the Libyan people, the Gulf state’s QNA state news agency said.
Of the 31 PTNC members, the names of only 13 have been publicly revealed. Council spokesmen say it is still too dangerous to identify members in areas still controlled by Gaddafi.
Libyan state television on Monday condemned Qatar’s recognition of Libya’s rebel council, saying the move amounted to “blatant interference” in Libyan affairs.
In a screen caption, the state TV channel said Qatar, which it called “a statelet”, had no right to question the unity of the Libyan nation by recognising the rebel council.

Yemen
Yemen’s chaos deepened on Monday when people looting a munitions factory set off an accidental explosion that killed at least 78 in an area torn from government control by Islamist militants exploiting the president’s rapidly dwindling power.
The seizure of the factory amplified Western fears that the fragile Yemeni state could deteriorate quickly because of President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s standoff with an opposition coalition of youth groups, military defectors, clerics and tribal leaders calling for his ouster.
Saleh has cooperated closely with the US in the battle against Yemen’s branch of al-Qaeda, which has used areas of Yemen long out of state control to launch attacks including the attempt to bomb a Detroit-bound airliner with a bomb sewn into underwear.
Saleh has also battled regional rebellions in the north and south.
State control diminished further this month as massive demonstrations spiraled in major cities and the government pulled police from many towns, and anti-government protesters in other areas pushed out police and soldiers and set up militias for self-defense. The protesters blame Saleh for mismanagement, repression and the fatal shootings of protesters, and say they will not relent until he goes.

“As the central government continues to erode in Yemen, something will fill the gap,” said Christopher Boucek, a Yemen expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “Who will thrive in that space ... is something we very much need to be worried about,” he said.
On Sunday, armed men whom residents described as religious militants seized the towns of Jaar and al-Husn, a hilltop overlooking them, and the factory that makes Kalashnikov assault rifles, ammunitions and explosives used to build roads in the mountainous southern province of Abyan, where Yemen’s al-Qaeda branch has been active.
Residents offered few details about the militants’ identities or broader allegiances.
Factory worker Hakim Mohammed told The Associated Press by telephone that the militants took two armored cars, a tank, several pickup trucks mounted with machine guns and ammunition. Later, dozens of impoverished men, women and children entered the facility and looted anything of valued that remained, including cables, doors and vehicle fuel, he said.

Some emptied gunpowder barrels to use for collecting rain water, and others picked through the compound’s cafeteria for forgotten bags of flour and sugar, said Mohammed, 28.
Residents told the Al-Jazeera satellite network that someone may dropped a lit cigarette next to the remaining explosives, setting off a massive blast that could be heard 10 miles (15 kms) away, resident Seif Mohammed said.
Twenty-seven of the wounded were in critical condition, said officials at al-Razi hospital in Jaar.
The deputy governor of Abyan province, Saleh al-Samty, blamed the national government for the tragedy, saying it was because of the security pullback and resulting disorder.
In a swath of territory that abuts the Saudi Arabian border, a renegade official announced he was the new governor last week — apparently with the consent of residents.
And in the province of Marab, al-Qaeda militants have used instablity to conduct a series of drive-by shootings against Yemeni security forces. On Sunday, they killed seven soldiers in one such attack.

Dissident
Yemen President Ali Abdallah Saleh tried to get Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar, now a leading dissident officer, killed last year by tricking Saudi forces into bombing his headquarters, a Norwegian daily said Monday, quoting a leaked US cable.
“In the winter of 2010,” Saudi fighter jets bombing Shiite rebellion targets in Yemen were directed to bomb a building that had been described as insurgent headquarters,” the Aftenposten daily reported.
But the mission was aborted at the last minute when pilots realised they were about to bomb the headquarters of General Ahmar, Aftenposten explained, saying its information came from a cable from the US embassy in Riyadh.
The Norwegian daily of reference, which announced last year it had obtained all 250,000 US diplomatic cables whistleblowing website WikiLeaks had accessed, did not publish the cable’s content directly on its website as it usually does.
It said General Ahmar was at the time “the half-brother, a close ally, and the greatest rival for the presidency” of President Saleh.

“By doing so, Saleh was probably trying to get rid of a potential rival,” Aftenposten said.
The daily did not mention the date of the cable but said the document detailed a “secret” meeting between US diplomats and Saudi Arabian Vice Defence Minister Khaled Ben Sultan on February 6, 2010.
In a major blow to Saleh, General Ahmar, commander of the Northwest Military District which includes Yemeni capital Sanaa and the first armoured tank division, announced a week ago that he had joined the “revolution.”
On Sunday he vowed to help bring about Saleh’s overthrow.
Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries will respect the choice of Yemen’s public as long as it supports security and stability, the secretary general of the political and economic bloc of Gulf countries said on Monday.
“We respect the choices of the Yemeni people to support security and stability and national unity,” Secretary-General Abdulrahman al-Attiyah said at a meeting in the Saudi capital.
Yemen is not part of the richer GCC, which includes Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

Syria
Syrian security forces fired tear gas on thousands of protesters Monday in a restive southern city as President Bashar Assad faced down the most serious threat to his family’s four decades of authoritarian rule.
Assad was expected to address the nation as early as Tuesday to try to ease the crisis by lifting a nearly 50-year state of emergency and moving to annul other harsh restrictions on civil liberties and political freedoms.
Syria has been rocked by more than a week of demonstrations that began in the drought-parched agricultural city of Daraa and exploded nationwide on Friday, with security forces opening fire on demonstrators in at least six locations. The death toll was at least 61 since March 18, according to Human Rights Watch.

The unrest in Syria, a country of 23.5 million, is a new and highly unpredictable element in the wave of unrest that has swept through the Arab world. Syria has built a close relationship with Iran, allowing the Shiite powerhouse to extend its influence into neighboring Lebanon and the Palestinian territories, where it provides money and weapons to militants.
Instability here also throws into disarray the US push for engagement in Syria, part of Washington’s plan to peel Damascus away from its allegiance to Hamas and Hezbollah.
On Monday, an eyewitness in Daraa said up to 4,000 people were protesting there, calling for more political freedoms. He said security forces fired tear gas at the crowd and live ammunition in the air to disperse them.
The witness spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.
Syrian TV denied troops had fire on the demonstrators.
The eyewitness and another Daraa resident said security forces who had scaled back their presence in the past few days were back in full force, with tanks and army vehicles were surrounding the city.
Monday’s protest was near the judicial palace just over a mile (2 kms) away from the old city center, where up to 1,200 people are still holding a sit-in the al-Omari mosque — the epicenter of the protests in Daraa.

Elsewhere in Syria, armed groups appeared to be facing off and threatening an escalation in violence in the country’s main port city of Latakia. Residents were taking up weapons and manning their own checkpoints to guard against what they say are unknown gunmen roaming the streets carrying sticks and hunting rifles, witnesses said Monday.
It was not clear whether the gunmen were working for the government.
The scenes in Latakia, a Mediterranean port once known as a summer tourist draw, were a remarkable display of anarchy in what had been one of the Mideast’s most tightly controlled countries.
The Latakia resident told AP that soldiers were deployed in the city and around key buildings, including the ruling Baath party headquarters and the Central Bank.

But he said that in nearby villages and entrances to the city, armed groups who appeared to be residents were blocking roads with garbage containers and large rocks and asking people for their ID.
“They are terrorizing people,” he said. “They are regular people who are taking up the role of security forces, that’s extremely dangerous,” he said.
The government has accused armed, foreign elements of working to sow sectarian strife and destabilize the country.
Syria, a predominantly Sunni country ruled by minority Alawites, has a history of suppressing dissent. Assad’s father and predecessor, Hafez, crushed a Muslim fundamentalist uprising in the city of Hama 1982, killing thousands.
Latakia is home to a potentially volatile sectarian mix of Sunnis in the urban core and the Assads’ Alawite branch of Shiite Islam in villages on its outskirts, along with small minorities of Christians, ethnic Turks and other groups.

Egypt
Ousted president Hosni Mubarak and his family are under house arrest, Egypt’s Supreme Council of the Armed Forces said on its website Monday, denying that the former leader had fled to Saudi Arabia.
“There is no truth to reports that former president Hosni Mubarak has left Egypt for Tabuk in Saudi Arabia,” the country’s military rulers said in a statement on Facebook.
“He is under house arrest, with his family, in Egypt,” it said.
The council has ruled Egypt since Mubarak was forced to quit on Feb 11 after 18 days of massive street protests against his 30-year autocratic regime.
On March 3, Egypt’s prosecutor general denied media reports that Mubarak was in Saudi Arabia, insisting that he was at the family retreat in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.
Media reports suggested that Mubarak had gone to Tabuk to receive medical treatment. The state-owned daily Al-Akhbar claimed Mubarak, 82, was receiving medical treatment for cancer.

Jordan
The prime minister of Jordan said on Monday people have the right to free speech and that the government will set aside special areas for protests, in an apparent bid to ease tensions after bloody clashes last week.
“The freedom of speech and freedom of assembly are constitutional rights as long as they are peaceful, civilised and do not harm people,” Prime Minister Maaruf Bakhit said in a statement carried by the state-run Petra news agency.
“The government, which is keen on preserving these rights, will allocate certain places for demonstrations, to protect protesters and avoid obstructing the lives of others.”
A 55-year-old protester died and 160 people were injured on Friday when police broke up a pro-reform protest camp in Amman following a stone attack by loyalists against young demonstrators.
Hundreds of loyalists on Saturday marched in several neighbourhoods of the capital, carrying pictures of King Abdallah II as well as firearms and swords, chanting slogans against “all those who undermine the stability” of the regime and the country.
“Carrying firearms, bats, stones and sharp tools as well as attempts to prevent peaceful demonstrations are condemned. They harm Jordan’s image and reform drive,” Bakhit said.
“The security apparatuses must firmly stop any one who tries to break the law and threaten the lives and safety of citizens.”
Bakhit warned against “proposals of sedition.”

“I call on all political parties, civil society institutions and youths to avoid proposals of sedition, including traps posted online,” he said.
He was apparently referring to calls to limit the king’s powers to pave the way for a constitutional monarchy, which has been described as a “threat to Jordan’s survival”, including some that have surfaced on the Internet.
The prime minister’s remarks came after the king on Sunday said “the most important thing now is our national unity, which must not be touched.”
Bakhit called on 15 members of a government-appointed commission for dialogue who quit after Friday’s clashes to reconsider their decisions.
“I urge those committee members to retract their resignations in order to accomplish the major national task of carrying out reforms,” he said.
The powerful Islamist opposition has rejected the commission and called for Bakhit’s ouster after the violence.