BREGA, Libya, April 2, (Agencies): Libyan rebels were claiming victory over forces loyal to Muammar Gaddafi in the battle for Brega after fierce fighting raged around the strategic oil town on Saturday, an AFP journalist reported.
But the situation in Brega remained confused, and an AFP correspondent at the scene said it was impossible to be sure who held the town.
The rebels had advanced in the morning but the signs were that they had lost ground and dropped back.
They were firing multiple-rocket launchers, the notorious so-called “Stalin’s organ”, towards pro-Gaddafi positions in the south.
Brega seemed to be a divided town, for although the rebels claimed to be in control of the oil terminal, they were still firing at it.

Seven bodies of pro-Gaddafi fighters and at least 10 burnt-out army pick-up trucks lay strewn along the roadside just east of Brega, witness to the bitter fighting for the key oil town.
Jubilant rebel fighters told how a strike by international aircraft took out at least two vehicles in a convoy of seven heavily armed pick-up trucks and they finished off the rest with rocket-launchers from their hideout in a eucalyptus grove overlooking the highway.
A crater, five metres wide and two deep (16 feet wide and six deep), close by the wrecked trucks, marked where the rebels said the aircraft struck late on Friday.
The force of the blast had transformed one large Ford F150 pick-up into a heap of mangled metal. The cab, sides and the 107mm rocket-launcher mounted on its back had all been blown apart.
Scraps of milk carton and ration pack lay strewn around, shredded by the shrapnel.
“The aircraft carried out the bombing raid on Friday evening. Thank God,” said rebel fighter, Ramzi Ahmed, who had travelled to Brega from the strategic road junction town of Ajdabiya, 80 kms (50 miles) to the east, back towards rebel-held territory.

“That was what opened the road up for our forces,” he said, pointing to the highway west into Brega.
“It was our men who then attacked the rest of the vehicles with rocket-launchers. But without the aircraft, we could have done nothing,” Ahmed added.
The vehicles of the pro-Gaddafi convoy and even the bodies of the dead had been looted during the night and stripped of anything useful — provisions, clothing and even personal effects.
The rebels had already taken any serviceable guns and ammunition as they seek to counter the huge superiority in weaponry of Gaddafi’s forces.
Brega, 800 kms (500 miles) east of Tripoli, has been the scene of intense exchanges over the past few days after pro-Gaddafi forces returned after being driven out by the rebels.
But it has been unclear since Thursday who actually held the town, with the rebel forces regrouping in Ajdabiya.
“They (the rebel advance column) are now in Brega but it has still not been secured. There are Gaddafi snipers in the university and in private houses. We are hunting them down but you have to be careful,” said Ahmed.
The other fighters clearly shared his jumpiness about the dangers from Gaddafi forces who had stayed behind.
“Look out, they’re coming,” the shout went up around the ambush site and rebels and looters alike leapt into their vehicles and scorched off back east away from Brega.

Killed
The main Libyan opposition spokesman says 13 rebels have accidentally been killed and seven injured in a Nato airstrike targeting Muammar Gaddafi’s forces.
Abdel-Hafidh Ghoga said Saturday that the attack occurred as the rebels prepared to take over the oil city of Brega.
His comments are the first confirmation that the rebels were killed in an airstrike. Nato says it’s looking into the report.
Calling it an “unfortunate accident,” Ghoga says the rebels were killed as they moved forward while the Nato strike was in progress late Friday.
Nato said Saturday that it was investigating Libyan rebel reports that a coalition warplane had struck a rebel position that was firing into the air near the eastern front line of the battle with Gaddafi’s forces.
Rebels told The Associated Press that a group of opposition fighters was hit by an airstrike about 12 miles (20 kms) east of the town of Brega on Friday night.
Mohammad Bedrise, a doctor in a nearby hospital, said three burned bodies had been brought in by men who said they had been hit after firing a heavy machine gun in the air in celebration. Idris Kadiki, a 38-year-old mechanical engineer, said he had seen an ambulance and three cars burning after an airstrike.
Salah Yunis, 30, a fighter from Beyda, said he saw what he described as an airstrike from far away, and then helped bury 6 or 7 charred bodies Saturday morning. He said the asphalt of the highway was pocked with holes after the attack.

Saudi
Saudi Arabia has urged Iran to mind its own business after a parliamentary panel in Tehran warned that Riyadh was “playing with fire” by deploying troops in Bahrain.
“Iran’s statement deliberately ignores Iran’s interference in the region’s affairs and its violation of the independence and sovereignty of the region,” a government official said late on Friday, quoted by state news agency SPA.

On Thursday, the Iranian parliament’s foreign affairs and national security committee said: “Saudi Arabia should know it’s better not to play with fire in the sensitive region of the Persian Gulf.”
Riyadh’s retort was to accuse Tehran of “fuelling confessional tensions (in the region) and failing to respect the norms of good neighbourliness as in the case of Kuwait where a spy cell has been uncovered.”
Iran was “ignoring the fact they have no right to violate Bahrain’s sovereignty, or to stick their nose in the affairs of Gulf countries,” the government official said.
Saudi Arabia heads a joint contingent of Gulf troops deployed in Bahrain on March 14 in support of the kingdom’s forces in Bahrain, which have faced anti-regime protests since mid-February.
Tehran condemned the deployment and has denied any link to three people convicted of spying in Kuwait and sentenced to death last Tuesday.

The Iranian statement “deliberately ignored” the facts about “Iranian interference” in the affairs of regional countries in violation of these States’ “sovereignty and independence,” and a bid to trigger “seditions and uncertainties” thus breaching international norms and laws, state-run news agency (SPA) quoted what it called a “Saudi sources” as saying.
The source said the latest of the Iranian “blatant interference” was in “the brotherly State of Kuwait with a conspiracy network linked with official Iranian elements.” He said, “those who spread these lies have forgotten or deliberately forgot that it is not Iran’s right to violate sovereignty of the Kingdom of Bahrain nor stick their noses in its affairs or the affairs of Gulf countries, or trying to confiscate Bahrain’s legitimate right to use Gulf Peninsula Shield forces.” The deployment of the forces, he noted, was in line with inter-GCC agreements to protect peace and security of the Bahraini people.

Meanwhile, a total of 5,080 “terror” suspects are being tried or have already been sentenced in Saudi Arabia, which battled a wave of al-Qaeda attacks in 2003-2006, the kingdom’s prosecutor said Saturday.
A court specialised in “terror crimes” has issued its verdicts in the case of 1,612 people, while 603 other cases are still being examined, the Bureau of Investigation and Prosecution said in a statement carried by SPA state news agency.
Prosecutors were also preparing charges against 934 suspects, while still investigating the cases of 1,931 others before referring them to the court, it said.
“The total number of terror suspects... is 5,080,” said the statement.
The Riyadh court, which operates secretly, was set up to try those suspected of links to al-Qaeda jihadist network.
The government has arrested scores of people for alleged involvement in al-Qaeda attacks or plots inside Saudi Arabia, especially between 2003 and 2006.
In a May 2009 petition to King Abdullah, 77 reform advocates criticised the secrecy of the trials and said any judgements reached by the “ad hoc security courts” would be questionable.

Syria
Syrian security forces arrested 46 people on Saturday, rights groups said a day after nine people were killed as thousands of pro-reform protesters took to the streets on the Muslim day of rest.
The wave of raids targeted the southern town of Daraa, one of the main centres of more than two weeks of demonstrations, as well as Douma north of Damascus and the industrial city of Homs.
In a joint statement, eight human rights groups said 46 people were arrested.
“We condemn this extremely violent and unjustified way the Syrian security services dealt with peaceful rallies in Douma where police used excessive force against demonstrators,” said the statement.
The rights groups reported that four people died and dozens were wounded in the crackdown. A human rights activist reported eight dead.

A Douma resident told AFP the agricultural town was calm despite security forces withholding some bodies from the previous day’s deadly violence in an apparent bid to prevent funerals from sparking fresh protests.
Families decided against burying four of the dead on Saturday although life in Douma was back to normal, with shops open and a “usual” deployment of security forces.
A witness told AFP security forces used live ammunition to disperse stone-throwing protesters after weekly Muslim prayers on Friday.
The authorities denied the security forces were responsible for the deaths, blaming them on an “armed group” which opened fire from rooftops on both demonstrators and police.
They acknowledged an unspecified number of deaths and said dozens were wounded, some of them policemen.

State television charged that “some of the demonstrators had daubed their clothes with red dye to make foreign reporters believe that they had been injured.”
Some 200 people demonstrated outside the courthouse in Daraa, a tribal town near the Jordan border, where security forces arrested eight people between a morning raid and a round-up after the protests, an activist told AFP.
A 20-year-old killed by security forces during a protest in Sanamein, just outside Daraa, was to be buried in nearby Inkhel, a human rights activist said.
He was one among as many as three people killed during Friday’s protest in the village. The official SANA news agency said a soldier was also seriously wounded in Daraa itself when young men tried to snatch his weapon.

Security forces carried out a series of raids in the area, another activist said, adding that architect Khaled al-Hassan, lawyer Hassan al-Aswad and teacher Issam Mahameed were among those detained.
Yusef Abu Rumiyeh, a member of parliament for Daraa, denounced security forces for opening fire on his constituents “without pity” and criticised President Bashar al-Assad for not offering his condolences.
The security forces “opened fire on the citizens of Daraa, killing and injuring them and preventing the wounded from getting to hospital,” said Rumiyeh, in a video uploaded to YouTube.
“The people of Hauran were waiting for President Assad to visit to offer his condolences. Had he done so, nothing that happened subsequently would have taken place.”
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon expressed deep concern about the violence and called on Syria’s government to address the “legitimate aspirations of the Syrian people.”

The government blamed Friday’s bloodshed on “armed gangs.” However, the state-run news agency acknowledged for the first time that Syria was seeing gatherings of people calling for reform.
The strength of the burgeoning protest movement is difficult to gauge because Syria has restricted media access and expelled journalists, making it difficult to determine the extent of the protests and how many people are turning out. Two Associated Press journalists were ordered to leave the country Friday with less than an hour’s notice.
Assad has made limited gestures of reform in the wake of the protests, but he has offered no specifics.
In his first public appearance Wednesday since the demonstrations began, he blamed a “foreign conspiracy” for the unrest. He then announced he was forming committees to look into civilian deaths and the possibility of replacing Syria’s despised emergency laws, which have been in place for decades and allow security forces to arrest people without charge.

Oman
Security forces detained between 50 and 60 protesters in clashes on Friday in the Omani industrial town of Sohar, witnesses said on Saturday.
The violence came three days after a crackdown to clear a Sohar roundabout where about 100 protesters had camped out.
“They arrested between 50 and 60 people (on Friday) who were throwing stones at the security forces, some as young as 17,” one of the Sohar protesters, who asked not to be identified for security reasons, said on Saturday.
Oman’s general prosecutor said demonstrators had wielded knives and stones, and security forces responded with tear gas and rubber bullets. Some of the protesters shot back at the security forces, he said in a statement carried by state media.
Witnesses said the crowds were dispersed by water cannon.
The town was quiet on Saturday and under a security clampdown.
“Sohar is full of security and military men and there are frequent inspections,” an activist told Reuters in Dubai by email. “There are no protests or sit-in in Sohar today. A sit-in would be the fastest way to end your life.”

A 25-year-old man injured by a rubber bullet in Friday’s clashes died in hospital. The activist said a second protester died on Saturday from wounds suffered on Friday.
The state prosecutor’s statement said five protesters were wounded, one critically.
Protests against autocratic rulers sweeping the region have not spared conservative and usually tranquil Oman, at the southeastern end of the Arabian peninsula. The ruling dynasty has long been backed by Washington and also has ties to Iran, a U.S. rival for influence in the region.
In the capital Muscat, about 150 people gathered outside the Shura Council, the elected chamber of parliament, late on Friday but there was no visible security presence, a Reuters witness said. A few dozen remained on Saturday.
Protests in Oman, which pumps out 864,000 barrels of oil a day, have focused on demands for better wages, jobs and an end to corruption. Many protesters have demanded that sacked government ministers be held accountable for corruption while they were in office.
Qaboos fired 12 ministers last month in an effort to appease protesters and ordered a series of reforms including a pay rise for civil servants and a 150 rial-a-month ($40) unemployment benefit for the jobless.
Some of the protesters at the roundabout on Friday had set up road blocks and were charging drivers tolls, saying they were jobless and needed the money, witnesses said.

Two roundabouts 15 kms (nine miles) apart have been the centre of the protests in Sohar. Each was guarded by two armoured vehicles on Saturday.
Wealthy Gulf Arab oil producers launched a $20 billion aid package this month for their less prosperous neighbours, Oman and Bahrain, a measure intended to generate jobs and enable the two countries to upgrade housing and infrastructure.
Bahrain’s Sunni rulers have stepped up arrests of cyber activists and Shiites, with more than 300 detained and dozens missing since security forces broke up pro-democracy street protests last month.
Bahrain imposed martial law and called in troops from fellow Sunni-ruled neighbours including Saudi Arabia to quell the protest movement led mostly by the state’s Shiite majority.