LUXEMBOURG, April 12, (Agencies): Forces loyal to Colonel Muammar Gaddafi have killed 10,000 people during the fighting in Libya, with 20,000 missing and 30,000 wounded, a quarter of them seriously, a top rebel official said Tuesday.
“We have now about 10,000 killed by Gaddafi soldiers, we have about 20,000 persons missing and about 30,000 injured — 7,000 of them seriously injured with life endangered,” Ali Al Isawi, a representative of Libya’s National Transition Council, told reporters.
“We want more efforts regarding protection of civilians against this aggression,” he added after attending talks with EU foreign ministers in Luxembourg.
Libyan rebels attending an international contact group meeting in Doha will accept nothing short of Gaddafi’s departure from Libya, a spokesman said on Tuesday.
“We shall not accept or listen to any proposal for a political solution if it does not stipulate in its first clause the departure of Gaddafi and his sons from Libya,” Mahmud Shammam said on the eve of the meeting.
Shammam confirmed to AFP that the rebels’ Transitional National Council (TNC) would attend the first meeting of the contact group of high-level international diplomats that was set up at a conference in London last month.
“We want to move from the de facto recognition of the council to an internationally-recognised legitimacy,” said Shammam, who holds the media portfolio in the TNC.
French foreign ministry spokesman Bernard Valero played up the TNC involvement in the one-day meeting being hosted by Qatar, the co-chair along with Britain.
Libya’s former foreign minister Mussa Kussa will be present in Doha but rebels made it clear he would not be representing them in any way at talks ahead of the meeting.
An African Union peace plan for Libya was in tatters after rebels stuck to their demand that Muammar Gaddafi step down and Nato came under pressure to drop more bombs on the strongman’s forces.
On March 29 in London, the TNC was not permitted to attend the plenary session of an international ministerial conference on the crisis, although its envoys held bilateral talks with several world powers.
But French foreign ministry spokesman, Bernard Valero, said: “Not only will they be there, but — and this should be checked with the Qataris — unlike London, where they were on the sidelines, they will appear before the contact group.”
Since London, with Gaddafi continuing to defy Nato air strikes and mounting calls for him to quit, the opposition council has gained support and recognition, notably from France, Italy and Qatar.
Valero said France would welcome the group playing a bigger role at the Wednesday meeting of around 20 countries, at foreign minister level, and international bodies.
The rebels were keen to distance themselves from former foreign minister Kussa. “He’s not connected to (rebel) Transitional National Council in any way or shape,” media liaison official Mustafa Gheriani told AFP.
The British Foreign Office said Kussa was leaving Britain on Tuesday to travel to Qatar for talks ahead of the meeting.
The African Union peace plan looked to be dead in the water after rebels dismissed a ceasefire out of hand.
Having managed to secure Gaddafi’s agreement to a truce, the AU delegation encountered resistance from the rebel leadership in Benghazi, who argued that the initiative was obsolete and insisted Gaddafi be forced to quit.
“Due to a political demand set as a precondition by the Transitional National Council (TNC) to launching urgent talks on the implementation of a truce, it was not possible at this stage to reach an agreement on the key issue of a cessation of hostilities,” an AU statement said.
In Benghazi, rebel leader Mustafa Abdul Jalil said the African initiative did not go far enough.
“From the first day the demand of our people has been the ouster of Gaddafi and the fall of his regime,” he said.
“Gaddafi and his sons must leave immediately if they want to be safe... Any initiative that does not include the people’s demand, the popular demand, essential demand, we cannot possibly recognise.”
The rebels also doubted Gaddafi would adhere to a truce.
“The world has seen these offers of ceasefires before and within 15 minutes (Gaddafi) starts shooting again,” Shamsiddin Abdulmolah, a spokesman for the TNC, said.
Control
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said on Tuesday that the situation in Libya had slipped out of control and indicated that its strongman leader Gaddafi needed to resign.
Speaking in an interview with Chinese television, a transcript of which was published by the Kremlin, Medvedev said no-one appeared to be able to control the situation in Libya including Gaddafi, rebels or Nato.
“It has already spun out of control, no-one controls it,” he said. “It has already spiralled out of control, and this is very sad.”
Reiterating Russia’s position, he criticised Nato’s military campaign saying the plan to enforce a no-fly zone over the country had been reduced to the use of force.
“Nevertheless the result has been achieved and as far as I understand, everyone has different plans in this regard. The Europeans say one thing, the Americans says another thing, one day ‘we will participate’, another day ‘we will not participate’.”
On Medvedev’s orders Russia abstained from the UN Security Council resolution that authorised the military action, refraining from using its veto which would have prevented the motion being adopted.
Russia has earlier said the time had come for Gaddafi to step down and Medvedev appeared to reiterate that sentiment.
“All the politicians, who are there, should make responsible decisions for the sake of the Libyan people,” Medvedev said. “Someone has to take a serious, maybe fateful decision to leave, give his country an opportunity to develop.”
Hit-and-run
Meanwhile, Gaddafi shows no sign of giving up the military struggle in Libya and is expected to resort to “hit-and-run” tactics after strikes to destroy his heavy weaponry, Nato said on Tuesday.
Brigadier-General Mark van Uhm, of Nato’s military staff, said the alliance had been flying an average of 155 air sorties daily in the past week, concentrating on preventing Gaddafi’s forces from using heavy weapons in civilian areas.
“We know we are having an effect,” Uhm told a news briefing.
“Pro-Gaddafi forces cannot fight where they want, they cannot fight how they want, and they cannot use the weapons they want. Nothing indicates, however, that Gaddafi has any intention of disengaging from operations.”
Uhm said Nato expected instead to see a change in tactics.
“Because his heavy weapons systems have been hit hard over the last few days, we expect pro-regime forces to favour hit-and-run tactics by motorised columns of pickup trucks to wear out opposition forces psychologically rather than gain ground,” he said.
Uhm said the military situation was “dynamic, fluid and changing constantly”.
While opposition forces had retaken control of Ajdabiyah on Monday, two days after being driven to the northern edge of the city, Misrata in the west was still under pressure.
While Gaddafi’s forces had withdrawn heavy weapons from some of the city’s neighbourhoods, they had continued shelling and they had also attacked several areas in the Zintan region southwest of Tripoli.
“While Nato attention is focused on destroying heavy military equipment posing the biggest threat to civilians, air strikes are also hitting ammunition bunkers and lines of communications to cut off these forces from their supplies,” Uhm said.
Gaddafi forces had withdrawn from Ajdabiyah towards Brega and deployed their lead elements east of the city, while rebel forces had deployed elements southwest of Ajdabiyah.
“So the confrontation line is once again between Ajdabiyah and Brega,” he said.
Van Uhm responded to criticism by French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe, who said Nato was not doing enough in Libya, by saying that the alliance had been conducting operations at “a very high operational tempo” in the past few days.
“With the assets we have, we are doing a great job and we fulfil our mission, so it’s hard for us to say we need more.”
“When you look at the mission, the arms embargo is in effect, the no-fly zone is effective. We are protecting the civilians. So we are executing our mission.”
Van Uhm conceded the alliance could do more with more aircraft, but said it was for members of the 28-nation alliance to decide what resources they were willing to provide.
Nato spokeswoman Carmen Romero said the alliance was effectively enforcing its UN mandate. “We have 200 planes. Right now we can do operations at a very high tempo using the assets we have at our disposal.”
Van Uhm said Nato had flown more than 1,900 sorties since taking over the Libya operations on March 31, about 800 of which were strike missions.
Poll
Most Britons, Americans, French and Italians think the West should aim to oust Gaddafi, but concerns over costs, aims and the possible outcomes of the Nato mission in Libya highlight divisions in the alliance.
A Reuters/Ipsos MORI poll found most people in Britain, Italy and the United States felt their country cannot afford military action, while a majority in all countries polled except France felt Nato action in Libya did not have clear objectives.
The alliance’s war planes have conducted more than 1,700 sorties over the north African country since taking over from a coalition led by France, the US and Britain to enact a United Nations resolution protecting civilians from Gaddafi’s forces.
Fighter jets and missiles launched from war ships have targeted Gadaffi’s military infrastructure and enforced a no-fly zone and an arms embargo, in an effort to halt Gaddafi’s attacks on regions opposed to his 41 years of oppressive rule.
Mass protests in mid-February wrested much of east Libya from his grip, but fighting between his forces and armed rebels since then has reached a stalemate despite Western intervention.
Earlier on Tuesday, the French and British foreign ministers called on Nato to do more to protect Libyan civilians.
The poll was conducted last week, and found that 63 percent of Britons, 71 percent of Americans, 67 percent of the French, and 76 percent of Italians wanted the West to help oust Gaddafi, but results were mixed when questioned on the Nato mission.
Only half of Britons, 55 percent of Americans, and 40 percent of Italians support allied military action in Libya. In France, which has led calls to use force in Libya, support was higher at 63 percent.
Most Western nations are sharply cutting spending to rein in ballooning budget deficits, and 79 percent of Britons, 74 percent of Americans and 62 percent of Italians felt their country could not afford military action in Libya.
Only half of the French felt they could afford it, although a much higher 65 percent felt the mission had clear objectives. Only 49 percent of Britons, 44 percent of Americans and 44 percent of Italians felt the same.
There was little consensus on what the outcome of Western military action in Libya might be, with results mainly split between expectations of a stalemate and the possibility of a new democratically elected government.
The poll was conducted online between April 5-7 in Britain, the US and France, and was conducted by telephone on April 4 in Italy. Interviewees were aged between 16 and 64 and were a representative sample of this age range in each country.
Data are weighted to match the profile of the population.
Syria
Syrian security forces stormed a town near the city of Banias on Tuesday, activists said, in a further move to quell unrest that has spread across the country, challenging the rule of President Bashar al-Assad.
Assad has faced down the mass protests, now in their fourth week, with force, pledges for reform and attempts to appease minority Kurds and conservative Sunnis. But the unprecedented calls for more freedoms have yet to abate.
The activists said Syrian secret police and soldiers had surrounded the town of Baida, 10 kms (six miles) south of Banias, which security forces had sealed off on Sunday after pro-democracy protests and an attack by irregular forces loyal to Assad on people guarding a Sunni mosque.
Four people were killed in shootings later in the day, which has raised tensions in the mostly Sunni Muslim country ruled by minority Alawites, adherents to an offshoot of Shiite Islam.
One activist said some residents of Baida, which is near the Mediterranean coast, had weapons and it appeared that an armed confrontation had erupted.
A Banias resident who had been in touch with people in Baida said armoured vehicles entered the town and soldiers “opened fire haphazardly”, adding that young men were being dragged out of their homes and arrested.
Toll
Syria’s main human rights movement said the death toll from pro-democracy protests reached 200 and urged the Arab League to impose sanctions on the ruling hierarchy.
Syria is the latest Arab country shaken by mass uprisings against authoritarian rulers, but the scale of protests have not yet reached levels seen in Tunisia and Egypt where leaders were ultimately overthrown. Central Damascus and Aleppo, Syria’s second city, have not witnessed mass demonstrations.
“Syria’s uprising is screaming with 200 martyrs, hundreds of injured and a similar number of arrests,” the Damascus Declaration group said in a letter sent on Monday to the secretary general of the Arab League.
The Damascus Declaration is named after a document signed in 2005 by prominent civic, Islamist and liberal leaders calling for the end of 41 years of Assad family rule and its replacement with a democratic system.
“The regime unleashes its forces to besiege cities and terrorise civilians, while protesters across Syria thunder with the same chant ‘peaceful peaceful’,” it added.
“We ask you to ... impose political, diplomatic and economic sanctions on the Syrian regime, which continues to be the faithful guardian of Hafez al-Assad’s legacy,” the letter said, referring to the iron-fisted rule of the president’s father, Hafez al-Assad, who died in 2000 after 30 years in power.
Authorities blame “armed groups” and “infiltrators” for the violence, in which they said soldiers and police have also been killed. On Tuesday, state news agency SANA named six security service personnel it said had been killed and 168 wounded in Deraa, suburbs of Damascus, Homs and Latakia.
Last Friday was one of the deadliest since the uprising began last month in Deraa, an agricultural city near the border with Jordan where many Sunni Muslim tribes resent the wealth and power amassed by minority Alawites.
Human Rights Watch, which said 27 people were killed in Deraa, condemned Syria’s security forces for preventing wounded protesters reaching hospitals and stopping medical teams from treating them in two towns.
“The Syrian authorities are responding to protests against repression with more repression: killings, mass arbitrary arrests, beatings and torture,” HRW’s Sarah Leah Whitson said.
HRW said protesters told the rights group that demonstrators seized weapons from an abandoned army checkpoint and shot at security forces, killing at least a dozen of them and setting on fire two cars belonging to the army and security services.
Western governments who have been trying to coax Syria out of its anti-Israeli alliance with Iran as well as to give up its support for militant groups Hamas and Hezbollah, have denounced the violence against the protesters and urged Assad to take more vigorous steps towards reforms such as lifting emergency law.
“Time is running out as every new casualty makes the clock tick faster,” said the International Crisis Group’s Peter Harling on the Foreign Policy blog.
“To open the space required for a radical reform agenda to take hold, the regime’s top priority must be to ensure a period of relative calm. Prospects will look grim were the country to witness yet another bloody Friday,” he said, describing Syria as a “slow-motion revolution”.
Assad has said the protests are part of a foreign conspiracy to sow sectarian strife. Syria’s ally Iran said the protests were not a spontaneous event but the result of Western interference.
Since the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt, authorities have intensified a campaign of arrests against dissidents and activists. Authorities generally embark on a round of arrests after protests, according to activists and witnesses, before later releasing some.
Fayez Sara, a journalist who was jailed for two-and-a-half years along with 11 Damascus Declaration members and released in 2010, was arrested again on Sunday, rights activists said.
“The secret police have been rounding up every outspoken figure they can get their hands on. They either call them in for ‘interrogation’ and keep them, pick them up from the street or break into their homes,” one of the rights defenders said.
Plot
Anti-government demonstrations in Syria are part of a plot by the West to undermine a government that supports “resistance” in the Middle East, Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman said on Tuesday.
Unlike uprisings in other parts of the Arab world which Tehran has applauded as an “Islamic awakening” of peoples against Western-backed oppressors, the protests in Syria have received little media attention or official comment in Iran.
But at his weekly news conference on Tuesday, Iran’s spokesman said the protests in Syria over the last three weeks, in which 200 people died, according to a rights group , were not a spontaneous event but the result of foreign interference. Syria is Iran’s closest Arab ally.
“What is happening in Syria is a mischievous act of Westerners, particularly Americans and Zionists,” Ramin Mehmanparast told reporters.
“With the help of their media they are trying to create an artificial protest somewhere or exaggerate a demand of a small group and present it, instead, as the demand and will of the majority.”
“No one should be fooled by this trick that Americans are playing.”
The Iranian government crushed huge protests after the re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in June 2009. Two people were shot dead during a demonstration on Feb 14 this year, the first attempt by the opposition movement to rally in more than a year.
Yemen
Tens of thousands of Yemenis demonstrated across the country on Tuesday against a mediation proposal by neighboring Gulf nations because it offers the president immunity from prosecution.
Protesters in the capital Sanaa carried flowers to give to security forces and wore signs saying they were ready to die as they repeated their two-month-old call for Yemen’s president to leave office after 32 years.
Yemen has been wracked by protests since mid-February demanding Ali Abdullah Saleh to resign because of the country’s lack of freedoms and extreme poverty. In the ensuing crackdown, 120 people have been killed.
The six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council offered its own proposal Sunday to end the unrest and called on Saleh to transfer power to his deputy as part of a deal with the opposition.
The deal did not, however, specify a timeframe and included immunity from prosecution for Saleh and his family.
“The initiative does not clearly mention the immediate departure of the head of the regime and it did not touch on the fate of his relatives who are at the top military and security agencies that continue killing the peaceful protesters,” said the anti-government Civil Alliance of the Youth Revolution in a statement.
The alliance, which includes 30 youth groups, said the GCC proposals were an attempt to abort the peaceful revolution.
Protesters carried banners reading “after bloodshed, Saleh should be tried” and “you (Saleh) will not escape unpunished.” Hundreds of army and security officers in uniform also took part in Tuesday’s demonstration.
Lt Col Mohammed al-Khollani said the participation of him and his fellow officers was to “tell our military colleagues that your right place is among the revolutionaries and the revolution.”
Similar demonstrations were also held in the cities of Taiz, Aden, Ibb, Hadramawt, Saada and Thamar.
In response, the president’s office issued a statement saying Saleh “has repeatedly expressed no reservations to the peaceful and smooth transfer of power within the constitution,” which would allow him to remain in office until the 2013 elections — an option long rejected by protesters.
Pro-government groups went beyond the president’s carefully worded remarks, however, and in a joint statement rejected the GCC offer as a “flagrant interference in Yemen’s internal issues.”
According to the official SABA news agency, the statement denounced the GCC and said their move “goes against the will of the Yemeni people.”
Egypt
Ousted Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak has been admitted into intensive care in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, shortly after suffering a heart attack, the official MENA news agency reported.
“Former president Hosni Mubarak went into intensive care at the Sharm el-Sheikh International Hospital after suffering a heart attack,” MENA said.
The 82-year-old suffered a heart attack during questioning by prosecutors investigating graft and abuse allegations, state TV said earlier.
Mubarak was admitted by his bodyguards to the VIP wing of the hospital, state television reported, adding that the hospital was not accepting any patients except for emergency cases.
Police cars and ambulances surrounded the hospital, as well as a heavy military police presence, the television said.
Mubarak’s admission to hospital follows state media reports that he was due to be questioned imminently over violence against protesters and alleged corruption.
Nationwide protests that erupted on January 25 and left an estimated 800 people dead, forced Mubarak to give up his 30-year grip on power and hand the reins to a military council.
On Sunday, public prosecutor Abdel Magid Mahmud ordered Mubarak and his sons to be questioned, as part of a sweeping probe into corruption and abuse.
They will be asked about allegations that they were “connected to the crimes of assault against protesters, leading to deaths and injuries,” the official MENA news agency said on Sunday.
The former president will also be quizzed about allegations of graft, it added.
The announcement came after the broadcast of an audio tape in which Mubarak defended his reputation and after weeks of mounting protests calling for him to be put on trial.
In the audio message aired on the pan-Arab television network Al-Arabiya, the 82-year-old complained he was the victim of a smear campaign.
He pledged his assistance in a probe of his family’s foreign assets, but his defiance in threatening lawsuits against the media angered Egyptians who have been pressing for his trial.
After he resigned, Mubarak and his family moved to a residence in Sharm el-Sheikh. Although he is subject to a travel ban, his relative freedom has been a thorn in the side of the military rulers.
Weekly protests demanding his trial have attracted tens of thousands and eventually led to a deadly clash with soldiers early on Saturday morning after they tried to clear an overnight demonstration in Cairo’s Tahrir Square.
The military acknowledged that one person died on Saturday night from a gunshot wound but denied it used force or live ammunition to disperse the protesters.
Idolised as a saviour at the beginning of the revolt because it refused to crack down on protesters, the army has faced increasing criticism for stalling on reforms, not putting Mubarak in the dock and alleged human rights abuses.
Blogger
A three-year prison sentence handed to a blogger who criticised Egypt’s army suggests the country’s military rulers are drawing red lines around permissible speech, Human Rights Watch said.
The military council ruling Egypt said 25-year-old activist Maikel Nabil had used “inappropriate language” and defamed the military, and that his call that military conscription be scrapped would have a negative effect on young Egyptians.
Army officers arrested Nabil on March 28 at his home in Cairo and the military prosecutor charged him with insulting the military establishment and “spreading false information”, said New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW).
Nabil’s lawyers were told the judge would rule on April 12 but they discovered on April 11 that he had already been sentenced a day earlier in their absence, HRW cited defence lawyer Adel Ramadan as saying.
“Maikel Nabil’s three-year sentence may be the worst strike against free expression in Egypt since the Mubarak government jailed the first blogger for four years in 2007,” said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch.
Bahrain
A Shiite businessman and member of Bahrain opposition group Wefaq died in police custody on Tuesday, the group said, and the daughter of an arrested activist said she was on a hunger strike.
There was no immediate reaction by state media to the reported death and officials were not available to comment.
Bahrain’s Sunni Muslim rulers quelled weeks of protests led by mostly Shiite demonstrators last month by spreading security forces throughout the capital and calling in troops from Sunni-led Gulf Arab states, including oil giant Saudi Arabia.
The government has since arrested hundreds of Shiites, replaced editors at an opposition newspaper and fired hundreds of Shiite workers who were absent during a strike last month.
Mattar Mattar (Eds: correct), a member of Wefaq, said Kareem Fakhrawi had died in police custody, a week after he failed to return home from a police station where he had tried to complain about his house being demolished by police.
“Either he was sick and didn’t receive treatment or was tortured,” Mattar said.
Fakhrawi’s was the fourth known death in police custody in recent days. Bahrain’s government denies there is torture in Bahrain and says all such allegations will be investigated.
Wefaq said on Tuesday three Shiite doctors and several staff from the Education Ministry had been arrested on Monday, bringing the total number of detainees to 453.
“After these problems, many are afraid to contact us,” said Mattar. “I estimate the real number is not less than 600. That’s one in every 1,000 Bahrainis,” he said.
Bahrain said on Monday it had released 86 people held under martial law while “legal measures” were being taken against other detainees.
The United States, whose Fifth Fleet is stationed in the Gulf island kingdom, has offered only muted criticism of the government crackdown and analysts say it refrained from pressing Bahrain due to anxieties over interference from its rival Iran, just across the Gulf.
The severity of the crackdown stunned Bahrain’s Shiite majority, who say they have no ties to non-Arab Shiite power Iran. It has also sparked criticism from Iran and Shiite groups such as Hezbollah in Lebanon.
State media said on Tuesday Bahrain had put two Iranians and a Bahraini on trial on charges of spying for Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards.
Zainab Alkhawaja, daughter of a detained activist, wrote a letter addressed to US President Barack Obama on her blog “Angry Arabiya” announcing the start of her hunger strike on Monday and urging him to call for the release of her family.
“I chose to write to you and not to my own government because the al-Khalifa regime has proven that they do not care about our rights, or our lives,” she said.
“I demand the immediate release of my family members. My father: Abdulhadi Alkhawaja. My husband: Wafi Almajed. My brother-in-law: Hussein Ahmed. My uncle: Salah Alkhawaja.”
Activist Abdulhadi al-Khawaja, who was in exile for 12 years and briefly imprisoned for political dissent in 2004 after his return, was arrested on Saturday with his two sons-in-law, the Bahrain Centre for Human Rights centre said on Saturday.
A pro-government Facebook group called “Together we will expose the traitors”, has posted pictures of demonstrations in Manama and enlarged the faces of protesters holding placards calling for the downfall of the monarchy.
“We cannot live among these traitors,” the posting said. “Please try to find their names so they can be punished.”
State television has also enlarged images of protesters and Wefaq has expressed concern about vigilante justice against Shiites suspected of participating in protests.
Sunni backers of the government say the protests were masterminded by foreign countries and that political reforms launched by Bahrain’s king a decade ago have resulted in freedoms unique in the Gulf Arab region.
Bahrain’s Ministry of Interior warned in a statement on Tuesday that funeral processions should not be turned into political demonstrations by showing foreign flags or symbols.
Funerals of those killed in clashes with police or who died in police custody have become the only gatherings at which Shiites can express their anger after the government banned all demonstrations.