MISRATA, Libya, April 16, (Agencies): Loud explosions Saturday rocked the besieged rebel-held western Libyan city of Misrata, where the death toll mounted, as a rights watchdog said Muammar Gaddafi’s forces were using cluster bombs.
In the east, heavy fighting was reported as rebel fighters, bolstered by NATO air strikes, pushed on from the crossroads town of Ajdabiya towards the strategic oil town of Brega.
And even further west, NATO air strikes targeted Gaddafi’s hometown of Sirte, state news agency JANA reported, without giving details.
NATO warplanes had already struck Sirte on Friday, JANA reported at the time.
The blasts in Misrata were accompanied by bursts of gunfire heard coming from the city centre, after NATO flyovers and possible air raids were followed by a lull in shelling and shooting, an AFP correspondent said.
Officials at Misrata’s main Hikma hospital said overnight it had received six dead bodies and 31 wounded.
US-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) said its researchers reported the use of internationally banned cluster munitions against Misrata, the rebels’ last major bastion in western Libya.
Insurgents said Gaddafi loyalists were using cluster bombs, which explode in the air and scatter deadly, armour-piercing submunitions over a wide area.

“Last night it was like rain,” said Hazam Abu Zaid, a local resident who has taken up arms to defend his neighbourhood, describing the cluster bombings.
The use of the munitions was first reported by The New York Times. A reporting team for the daily photographed MAT-120 mortar rounds which it said were produced in Spain.
“It’s appalling that Libya is using this weapon, especially in a residential area,” said Steve Goose, HRW’s arms division director.
“They pose a huge risk to civilians, both during attacks because of their indiscriminate nature and afterwards because of the still-dangerous unexploded duds scattered about,” he said.
A spokesman for the Libyan regime denied the accusations.
“Absolutely no. We can’t do this. Morally, legally we can’t do this,” Mussa Ibrahim told journalists. “We never do it. We challenge them to prove it.”
In Paris, aid organisation Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said it had evacuated 99 people, including 64 war-wounded, by boat from Misrata on Friday to Tunisia.
Speaking of the dire conditions in the city, under siege for weeks, MSF Doctor Morten Rostrup said in a statement that “health structures have been struggling to cope with the influx of patients”.
“With the latest heavy bombardments in Mistrata, the situation is worsening, as hospitals have to discharge patients before their treatment is completed in order to treat the new wounded from fighting. Many injured cannot even access medical facilities without further risking their life.”

Desperate
Rostrup also said an MSF visiting a nearby migrant camp found that “these people live in extremely difficult conditions, lacking proper shelter and food. They are desperate to go back to their home countries.”
Libya said a Red Cross team had arrived in Misrata to assess the situation.
“The Libyan army took them to a specific place into the city and the Red Cross went to the other side (the one controlled by the opposition),” government spokesman Mussa Ibrahim told reporters in Tripoli.
Tens of thousands of migrants have already fled Libya since the rebellion broke out in mid-February.
Meanwhile, an AFP reporter stopped at a rebel checkpoint west of Ajdabiya heard explosions from several shells in the distance as rebels pushed forward to confront government forces hit by NATO air strikes.
The insurgents’ goal is to retake Brega about 80 kilometres (50 miles) away. Some reports said they were already on the outskirts of the oil town.
On Saturday afternoon, an AFP correspondent reported heavy fighting in the area, including rocket, mortar and small arms fire.
Meanwhile, doctors in Ajdabiya said one person was killed and seven wounded by gunfire Friday along the road to Brega. Their identity was not known.
In the far west of the country, witnesses on Friday reported NATO air strikes on Gaddafi armour in the Zintan region, amid clashes with rebels who hold several areas and rebel reports Gaddafi troops were trying to cut the road to nearby Yafran.
On the diplomatic front, the leaders of Britain, France and the United States said on Friday that a Libyan future including Gaddafi is “unthinkable,” while Russia charged that NATO was exceeding its UN mandate in Libya.

French Defence Minister Gerard Longuet said the United States, Britain and France were thinking beyond UN Security Council Resolution 1973 — which authorises action to protect Libyan civilians — and now seek regime change.
He admitted that the statement by the three leaders went beyond the terms of the current UN mandate.
“But I think that when three great powers say the same thing, it’s important for the United Nations, and perhaps one day the Security Council will make another resolution,” he added.
In Berlin, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov called for an immediate ceasefire and for the warring parties to be brought to the negotiating table.
UN Resolution 1973 calls for a ceasefire, but Gaddafi has relentlessly pursued his campaign to retake territory lost to the rebels.
NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen denied the air strikes were beyond the scope of the UN resolution.
“I have to stress that in the conduct of that operation, we do not go beyond the text or the spirit” of the resolution, he said.
The Washington Post reported late Friday that NATO is running short of precision bombs and other munitions in Libya, citing unnamed senior NATO and US officials. The scope of the problem was not mentioned.

Meanwhile, the European Union and NATO deepened their coordination for a potential EU military mission to deliver urgent humanitarian aid to Misrata, diplomats said.
The International Organisation for Migration said about 1,200 migrants have been evacuated from Misrata to the eastern rebel stronghold of Benghazi. Most were Bangladeshis and Egyptians.
Any EU mission would have to be coordinated with NATO because the 28-nation alliance has several warships and units of warplanes in the Mediterranean.
Chad’s foreign minister on Saturday rejected allegations by Libyan rebels fighting the government of leader Muammar Gaddafi that Chadian officers were fighting alongside Gaddafi’s soldiers.
Moussa Faki Mahmat, addressing diplomatic envoys to the Central African state’s capital, said a report by the Libyan transitional national council and submitted to the UN Security Council that alleged Chadian army officers were in Libya was untrue.
“We want to formally deny those accusations and, as proof, the officers mentioned in the report are here present,” Mahmat said, pointing to nine soldiers seated in the room.

Egypt
An Egyptian court dissolved the former ruling National Democratic Party on Saturday and ordered its funds and property to be handed to the government, a judicial source said.
“The administrative court issued a ruling to dissolve the NDP and seize its money, and its headquarters and buildings will be handed to the government,” the source said.
The NDP, the party of ousted president Hosni Mubarak, was fighting for its survival after protests forced the strongman to resign on February 11 and much of its senior leadership is now behind bars on suspicion of corruption.
Others such as Hossam Badrawi, who briefly led the party before resigning in protest when Mubarak tarried in stepping down, have either defected or are planning to form a new party.
The NDP, founded by former president Anwar Sadat, dominated Egyptian politics for around three decades, winning majorities in elections that were widely seen as rigged.
Talaat Sadat, the late president’s nephew, was appointed as the new head of the party after the revolt.
Sources said he was at Saturday’s hearing, after which opponents of the party began chanting “The NDP is illegitimate.”

Some NDP properties were inherited from the previous incarnation of the ruling party in Sadat’s time, while others are leased from private owners, its members claim.
There are also separate, private lawsuits demanding the return of some of the buildings to their owners.
The NDP’s main Nile riverfront headquarters was torched during the revolt that ousted Mubarak and is now being fought over by the Cairo governorate, which wants to turn it into a park, and the Egyptian Museum across the street.
Its remaining members had hoped to contest the upcoming parliamentary election in September and argued that they had cut ties with corrupt party officials and apologised to Egyptians for “party mistakes.”
During the past decade, Mubarak’s son Gamal established a policies secretariat in the party that pushed through economic reforms and increasingly turned the NDP into a legislative power centre.
Gamal, his brother Alaa and their father have all been remanded in preventive custody as part of an investigation into the killings of anti-regime protesters.
The three are also under suspicion of corruption, as are the party’s former secretary Safwat al-Sharif and other senior leaders.

Syria
President Bashar al-Assad promised on Saturday to lift 48 years of emergency law by next week but ignored popular demands to curb the security apparatus and dismantle Syria’s authoritarian system.
Assad, facing intensifying protests against his 11 years in power, had earlier pledged to replace the emergency law with anti-terrorism legislation but opposition figures said this was likely to preserve draconian curbs on freedom of speech and assembly in Syria, under monolithic Baath party rule since 1963.
“Next week is the maximum (time) limit for completion of these laws regarding the lifting of the state of emergency,” Assad said in a speech to a new cabinet he named last week, broadcast by Syrian state television.
“When the lifting of the emergency law package is issued, it should be firmly enforced. The Syrian people are civilised. They love order and they do not accept chaos and mob rule,” he said.
“We will not be lenient toward sabotage,” Assad said in a speech to a new cabinet he named last week.
The 45-year president did not mention the main demands of tens of thousands of protesters to end the tight grip of security services on everyday life, release thousands of long serving political prisoners, most of whom have been held without trial, and do away with a clause in Syria’s constitution that enshrines the Baath Party as “leader of the state and society”.
Assad said corruption was a problem but he announced no measures to curb his own family’s dominance over the Syrian economy. His cousin Rami Makhlouf, a tycoon, has expanded his businesses during Assad’s rule and he has been widely named by protesters in their calls for an end to public corruption.
Assad said stability remained his priority but that reform was needed to “strengthen the internal front”, following unprecedented protests against his authoritarian rule over the past month.

“We do not want to be hasty. Any reforms have to be based on maintaining internal stability,” Assad said.
His use of force and mass arrests, mixed with promises of reform and concessions to minority groups and conservative Muslims, have not placated protesters inspired by popular uprisings which toppled leaders in Tunisia and Egypt.
He unveiled the new government on Thursday and ordered the release of some detainees, but the government has little power in a one-party state dominated by Assad, his family and the security apparatus.
Demonstrations swept into the capital Damascus on Friday for the first time and thousands of protesters marched elsewhere.
Thousands of people also protested in the southern city of Deraa, the fount of the protest wave, on Saturday chanting: “The people want the overthrow of the regime”, two witnesses said.
Al-Assad expressed sorrow on Saturday over the deaths of an estimated 200 people killed in a month of protests demanding greater freedom.
“We are sad for all the people we have lost and all the people injured, and consider them all martyrs,” Assad said during a pre-recorded television address to his new cabinet broadcast on Saturday evening.
Thousands of Syrians on Saturday attended the funeral of a man killed in the northwestern city of Banias, while some 2,000 women staged a separate rally in his honour, witnesses and activists said.
The mourners chanted slogans in favor of greater freedoms, against the ruling Baath party, in power since 1963, and some also called for an end to the regime, the sources told AFP.
Osama al-Shikha, 40, died from his wounds after being shot on April 10 when witnesses said seven cars “carrying people sent by the regime arrived in front of the Abu Bakr al-Sidiq mosque and their occupants opened fire.”
“Five people were wounded,” a witness said, adding that “the people behind this shooting are regime thugs and their names are known to us.”

Yemen
Thousands of Yemeni women protested in Sanaa and other cities on Saturday, enraged by President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s remarks it was against Islam for women to join men in the demonstrations aimed at toppling him. The women, many clad in black Islamic dress with full face veils, said their role in protests was religiously sound and called on the president to step down in line with nearly three months of demonstrations demanding his ouster. “It seems that President Saleh failed in all his efforts to employ tribes and security to strike at those seeking his exit, and so he resorted to using religion, especially after he saw that thousands of women were taking part in protests,” said Samia al-Aghbari, a leader in the protest movement. Saleh, who has warned of civil war and the break-up of Yemen if he is forced out before organising an orderly transition, urged the opposition on Friday to reconsider their refusal to join talks to resolve the crisis in the fractious state.
But he also struck a defiant tone, calling the opposition liars and bandits, and appealing to religious sensitivities in the conservative Muslim country by criticising the mixing of unrelated men and women among Sanaa protesters.

Around 5,000 women demonstrated against him in Sanaa on Saturday, with similar numbers in the industrial city of Taiz, south of the capital. The anti-Saleh protests have had the support of the main opposition coalition, which includes leftists but whose largest member is the Islamist party, Islah.
“Oh youth, the honour of women has been slandered,” the women chanted, referring to Saleh’s remarks.
Some women brought their young daughters to the protests, including one with her face painted with the image of the Yemeni flag encircled by a heart on her cheek and the word “Leave” scrawled on her forehead.
“If Saleh read the Koran he wouldn’t have made this accusation,” said one protester, who gave her name only as Majda. “We ask he be tried according to Islamic law.”
Saudi and Western allies of Yemen fear a prolonged standoff could ignite clashes between rival military units and cause chaos that would benefit an active al-Qaeda wing operating in the poor, mountainous Arabian Peninsula country.
Diplomatic sources say talks to resolve the standoff stalled in recent weeks over Saleh’s desire for immunity from prosecution for him and his family.
Saleh has offered elections this year, but says he should stay in power to oversee the change or hand over to what he calls “safe hands”.

Gulf foreign ministers, trying to ease the threat Yemeni instability could pose to the region, invited Saleh and his opponents to talks on a transfer of power.
The Gulf plan announced last Sunday appeared to promise Saleh immunity, and he accepted it the next day.
But the opposition coalition said on Thursday it refused to go to the Riyadh talks because it wanted to focus on forcing Saleh out within two weeks, and the Gulf proposal did not include a quick timetable for transition.
More than 116 protesters have been killed in clashes with security forces since late January, and there are fears the violence could escalate in the country, half of whose 23 million people own a gun.
In the southern port city of Aden, gunmen on Saturday tried to storm a police station and then battled with security forces for half an hour before being driven back by rooftop sniper fire, a local official said.
Officials said protesters in Aden tried to shut down traffic in the city in support of a strike call, but security patrols were removing makeshift roadblocks. Most shops were closed.
In the southern province of Abyan, where both al-Qaeda militants and southern separatists are active, a gunman on a motorcycle shot dead a soldier as he walked in the street, medical sources said. A local official blamed al-Qaeda.

In the southern province of Lahej, gunmen attacked a security patrol late on Friday, wounding two soldiers in an attack tentatively blamed on separatists, a local official said.
Saleh has already lost control of several provinces, and Yemen’s neighbours worry he is an obstacle to stability in a country that overlooks a shipping lane used to transport over 3 million barrels of oil a day.
Even before the start of the protests, inspired by the toppling of the Tunisian and Egyptian presidents, Saleh was struggling to quell a separatist rebellion in the south and cement a truce with Shi’ite Muslim rebels in the north.
US ambassador in Yemen along with EU ambassadors put forward Friday a time schedule for implementing the initiative launched by the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) for the handover of power by Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh within 30 days, a political source said here.

The source told KUNA that US vision provides for signing an agreement between Saleh, and the opposition Joint Meeting Parties (JMP) under the sponsorhship of Washington in what includes the transfer of Saleh’s presidential powers within a week of his issuing of a decision appointing a new vice president.
The source, who asked to remain anonymous, said the Yemeni President asked that Dr Ali Mujawar, the caretaker Prime Minister, or Dr Rashed Olaimi should be the Vice President, then he declares within a month at most that he steps down as a President, though he should be secured from being put on trial after this.
The initiative also included that son of the Yemeni President and the Republican Guard Commander Ahmad should leave the country accompanied by Chairman of the National Security Apparatus Col. Ammar Mohammad Abdullah Saleh, and Chief of Staff of Central Security Forces Brig. Yehia Mohammad Abdullah Saleh.