BENGHAZI, Libya, July 28, (Agencies): The head of the Libyan rebel’s armed forces and two of his aides were killed by gunmen Thursday, the head of the rebel leadership said.
The death of Abdel-Fattah Younis was announced at a press conference in the de facto rebel capital, Benghazi, by the head of the rebels’ National Transitional Council, Mustafa Abdul-Jalil. He told reporters that rebel security had arrested the head of the group behind the killing.
Rebel security had arrested Younis and two of his aides early Thursday from their operations room near the rebels’ eastern front. Security officials said at the time that Younis was to be questioned about suspicions his family still had ties to Muammar Gaddafi’s regime.
Younis was Gaddafi’s interior minister before defecting to the rebels early in the uprising, which began in February.

Abdel-Jalil said that Younis had been summoned for questioning regarding “a military matter.” He said Younis and his two aides were shot before they arrived for questioning.
Abdel-Jalil called Younis “one of the heroes of the 17th of February revolution,” a name marking the date of early protests against Gaddafi’s regime.
While he criticized Gaddafi for seeking to break the unity of rebel forces, he did not say directly that Younis’ killers were associated with the regime. Instead, he issued a stiff warning about “armed groups” in rebel-held cities, saying they needed to join the fight against Gaddafi or risk being arrested by security forces.
Libyan rebels, meanwhile, seized two localities near the Tunisian border on Thursday as part of their pre-Ramadan offensive aimed at unseating strongman Muammar Gaddafi, an AFP correspondent said.
The first was the town of Al-Ghazaya, some 12 kms (9 miles) from the frontier and the second was Umm Al-Far, a hamlet of a few hundred inhabitants 10 kms northeast of there.
The assault on Al-Ghazaya began at around 8:00 am (0600 GMT) in a two-pronged attack from the east and west that appeared to have driven loyalists out, as the town was deserted when they entered.
However, ammunition was found stored in a school and other public villages in the town.
The rebels then moved on to Umm Al-Far and bombarded it, blowing up a munitions dump. The hamlet fell around 5:00 pm, and rebels, mostly on foot, were moving through the streets to secure them a half hour later.

The capture of Al-Ghazaya, being used as a base by Gaddafi troops to fire rockets onto rebel forces in nearby Nalut town, followed a defiant speech by the Libyan leader that he is ready to “sacrifice” to ensure victory in the civil war.
The early morning assault from the surrounding mountains was part of the offensive by the rebels aimed at marching on Tripoli and toppling Gaddafi.
Initial attacks had begun on Wednesday, a military source told an AFP correspondent in Zintan, in the Nalut region of western Libya.
Before the rebels overran the town, an AFP correspondent watching through binoculars saw dozens of army vehicles pulling out in the face of rebel artillery fire from heights overlooking Al-Ghazaya.
The mountainous Nafusa region has seen some of the fiercest fighting between loyalist troops and rebel forces.
The two sides had fought their way into a stalemate five months after the start of a popular uprising that quickly turned into a civil war.
The Libyan leader controls much of the west and his Tripoli stronghold, while the opposition holds the east from its bastion in Benghazi.
A defiant Gaddafi said late Wednesday he is ready to “sacrifice” to defeat the rebels after they warned the deadline for him to step down and stay in Libya has expired.
“We are not afraid. We will defeat them,” Gaddafi said in an audio message, referring to the NATO alliance and the insurgents.

“We will pay the price with our lives, our women and our children. We are ready to sacrifice (ourselves) to defeat the enemy,” he added in a message to loyalists in the town of Zaltan, also near the Tunisian border.
Gaddafi also called on his partisans to march on Nafusa and urged his opponents to surrender.
“Traitors, surrender your weapons... Choose: death or surrender,” Gaddafi told the rebels, adding that without support from NATO the insurgents could not have seized the strategic mountainous region.
Gaddafi’s message came after the chief of the rebel National Transitional Council said in Benghazi that an offer they had made through the UN that would have allowed the strongman to remain in Libya if he stepped down had lapsed.
NTC chairman Mustafa Mohamed Abdel Jalil said the rebels had delivered to UN special envoy Abdul Ilah al-Khatib “a very specific, well-intentioned offer that Gaddafi can stay in Libya under three conditions.
“We made a proposal. The deadline has passed. The proposal has expired,” he told reporters of the month-old offer.
Under the offer, Gaddafi would have had to step aside and relinquish all responsibilities, his place of residence would be the “choice of the Libyan people” and he would be under “close supervision,” Abdel Jalil said.
“The period of this proposal has passed,” he said.
Meanwhile, Britain gave a major boost to the rebels by inviting them to take over the Libyan embassy in London, which the Gaddafi regime slammed, while Washington said it was examining a request by the rebels to recognise the insurgents.

Syria
Syrian forces have turned the screws in their clampdown on a democracy movement, arresting more than 100 people including two leading activists, rights groups said Thursday, on the eve of more mass rallies.
Security forces armed with machine guns and other weapons arrived in the town of Qatana, 25 kms (15 miles) south of Damascus, on pickup trucks and carried out the arrests before searching for more protesters.
The sweep came as people took to the streets of Damascus and Qatana to protest after security forces killed 11 people on Wednesday in Kanaker, 50 kms southwest of the capital, said human rights activists.
Among those said to have been detained were two prominent members of a national coordination committee for democratic change in Syria, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
“Security forces in Damascus on July 27 arrested two known Syrian opposition figures Adnan Wehbe and Nizar al-Samadi,” the Observatory said, adding that their fate “remains unknown.”
Webhe is a leader of the Democratic Socialist Arab Union Party while Samadi is a well-known Islamic personality from Douma, a protest hub in Damascus’ outer suburbs.
Around another 100 people were arrested overnight in raids on houses in Damascus, the London-based Observatory told AFP in Nicosia by telephone.

“A demonstration was held on Wednesday night on Khaled Ben al-Walid Avenue in Damascus, bringing together many young men and women who blocked the avenue for a short time,” said the Observatory.
“One hundred young people also marched in several neighbourhoods calling for the fall of the regime,” it said.
Protests also took place after evening prayers in Qatana in support of Kanaker, a town of 250,000 people west of Damascus where forces killed 11 people on Wednesday, including a child aged seven, the activists said.
“The military erected a checkpoint at the entrance of Qatana where two tanks were stationed,” said the Observatory.
State media quoted officials as saying that “law enforcement agents hunted for armed terrorist gangs that have been terrorising the peaceful citizens of Kanaker.”
“Four armed terrorist fighters were killed and two others were wounded in this successful and quality operation,” government newspapers reported.
Syria has since March 15 been shaken by an unprecedented revolt against the regime of President Bashar al-Assad which accuses “armed terrorist groups” of wanting to spread chaos in the country.
Despite the ongoing crackdown, Facebook group The Syrian Revolution 2011, a motor of the protest movement, has called on people who have remained silent so far to mass Friday for yet more anti-regime demonstrations.

Security forces have arrested almost 3,000 people in the crackdown on the pro-democracy movement, which broke out in mid-March inspired by regime-changing revolts in Tunisia and Egypt.
“Avaaz has today revealed the identities of 2,918 Syrians who have been arrested by Syrian security forces and whose whereabouts are now unknown,” the non-governmental organisation said.
Ibrahim Qashoush’s lyrics moved thousands of protesters in Syria who sang his jaunty verses at rallies, telling President Bashar Assad, “Time to leave.” So when his body was dumped in the river flowing through his hometown, his killers added an obvious message: His throat was carved out.
Qashoush’s slaying underlines how brutal Syria’s turmoil has become as authorities try to crush a persistent uprising. His fellow activists are convinced he was killed by security forces and fear it could mark a new campaign to liquidate protest leaders.
The 42-year-old Qashoush, a father of three boys, was a fireman in the central Syrian city of Hama who wrote poetry in his spare time, said a close friend, Saleh Abu Yaman. Before the uprising began in mid-March, he’d write about love or hard economic times.
“All the poems and songs he wrote were by instinct. He used to be sitting with his friends and then start reciting a poem,” Abu Yaman said.
But once the protests erupted and spread, Qashoush turned his pen to the uprising. Hama became one of the hottest centers of the demonstrations.

The hometown son’s star rose with the city. At nearly every protest, the crowds were singing his most popular lyric, “Come on, Bashar, time to leave.” It was put to a bouncy tune, and his poems rang with a down-to-earth, jokey sound.
“Screw you, Bashar, and screw those who salute you. Come on, Bashar, time to leave!” hundreds of thousands sang behind a singer on stage in Hama’s central Assi Square during a rally at the beginning of the month. “Freedom is at our doors. Come on, Bashar, time to leave!”
Two days later, on July 3, Qashoush disappeared.
Abu Yaman says he was told by witnesses that Qashoush was walking to work in central Hama when a white vehicle stopped, several men jumped out and muscled him into the car. They then sped away.
“We immediately knew he was captured by security agents,” Abu Yaman told The Associated Press.
Early the next day, residents found his body in the Orontes River, which cuts through Hama. His throat had been cut away. YouTube footage of his body shows him being put on a bed, his head flopping loosely to show a gaping, bloody wound on the front of his neck where his throat used to be.

Bahrain
Bahrain’s king approved parliamentary reforms on Thursday after the suppression of pro-democracy protests, granting more powers of scrutiny for the elected lower house but preserving the dominance of an upper house appointed by the royal elite.
King Hamad bin Isa was addressing a state-appointed body called the National Dialogue, set up to address popular grievances after martial law was rescinded in May, after it presented its final proposals on reforms.
They fell far short of what opposition groups and protesters demanded in February and March, when the unrest was crushed.
The country’s largest Shi’ite opposition group, Wefaq, walked out of the dialogue last week, calling it “theatre”.
“We have ordered the executive and legislative authorities to take the necessary measures to approve the agreements,” the king said in a speech shown on state television.
He also ordered a pay rise for civilian and military government employees — a move reminiscent of Saudi Arabia’s move earlier this year disbursing huge handouts to key sectors of society in a bid to prevent a popular revolt like those that have shaken other authoritarian Arab states this year.
Bahrain’s Sunni Muslim rulers called in troops from Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states in March to help quell protests dominated by the majority Shi’ite community. The government said the unrest was sectarian and backed by non-Arab Shi’ite power Iran. Bahraini Shi’ites denied this.

A summary of the National Dialogue’s proposals published on Thursday include a greater degree of oversight of government by the elected lower house but the key dispute over balance of power between different parliamentary chambers was not resolved.
“They did not agree on whether the Shura Council (upper house) should be granted the same powers as the parliament, and whether the responsibility for lawmaking and oversight should be restricted to the elected chamber,” the summary sent to Reuters by the National Dialogue body said.
“Delegates did not reach consensus on a number of further suggestions, such as limiting the term for ministers and head of government or a fixed quota for women in parliament.”
The appointed upper house has just as many seats as the elected lower house and dominates the legislative process.
Wefaq spokesman Khalil al-Marzouq said the final proposals vindicated his group’s decision to boycott. It did not attend the ceremony with the king.

“The reason we pulled out is because of this. The upper house should only be there for consultation,” he said, attacking state media fanfare over reforms which he said left a large swath of Bahrainis cold.
Bahrain has tried to address international criticism, including from Washington, of a harsh security crackdown that followed the breakup of the protests involving detention, military trials, sackings and some deaths in custody.
“Participants recognised the importance of resolving the issues surrounding redundancies during the recent unrest,” the summary said. “They recommended looking at international best practices in finding solutions to overcome sectarian divides and support the healing process after the recent crisis.”
Bahrain, home port to the US Fifth Fleet, is seen as a fault line for tensions between Iran and Saudi Arabia, which sees itself as the leader of Sunni Islam.
The International Crisis Group think-tank issued a bleak report on Thursday saying a re-eruption of civil unrest was possible at any time in Bahrain with hardliners among Sunnis, Shi’ites and the ruling elite preparing for any more conflict.

Egypt
Egypt’s ex-president Hosni Mubarak’s murder trial on Aug 3 will take place in Cairo, the state news agency MENA said Thursday, a move likely to appease activists but create a logistical nightmare.
Mubarak, ousted in February by a popular revolt, has been under arrest in hospital in the Red Sea resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh, where he is being treated for a heart condition.
“It has been decided that the trial of ex-president Hosni Mubarak and his two sons Alaa and Gamal ... will be held in the building of the General Authority for Investment and the free trade areas in the Cairo Expo grounds,” MENA quoted a justice ministry official Mohammed Manei as saying.
Health Minister Amr Hilmi told reporters Mubarak’s health was “good” and that he was fit to be transferred to Cairo.
But one of Mubarak’s doctors told AFP they had received no warning that they should prepare for his transfer.

Mubarak’s transfer to Cairo was a key demand of protesters whose relations with the ruling military and government have strained in the past weeks partly over accusations that they are delaying trials of former regime officials.
Tareq Khuli, a leader of the April 6 movement that has held a 20 day sit-in in Cairo’s Tahrir Square to call for faster reforms, hailed the announcement but said his group would keep up pressure to make sure it is implemented.
“It’s a good step, and it is the result of public pressure,” said Khuli. “We will continue the pressure to make sure this step is executed.”
Mubarak, 83, will stand trial with his two sons and his former interior minister Habib al-Adli, who are imprisoned in Cairo.
Six police commanders are also included as defendants, as is a businessman close to Mubarak who fled the country and was arrested in Spain.

Manei, an assistant to the justice minister, said chairs were being fixed in the hall for the expected audience and an “unprecedented security plan” would bring together soldiers and police for security.
A cage for the defendants will also be installed, Manei told MENA. Defendants, dressed in white uniforms, are usually kept in black metal cages during court proceedings.
Ahmed Mekki, a recently retired deputy appeals court head, said the exhibition grounds were used in the past by Mubarak himself to try Islamists accused of assassinating Mubarak’s predecessor Anwar Sadat in 1981.
“It is much larger than court rooms, and easier to secure,” he said.
Tareq al-Zumor, one of the Islamists who was tried and sentenced over the assassination, said he looked forward to attending the trial.
“I hope to attend, to see Mubarak in the same cage I was in,” said Zumor, who spent three decades in jail and was released after Mubarak’s ouster.
But it was not immediately clear whether Mubarak himself would appear in the cage.

Yemen
Yemeni tribesmen attacked an army camp near the capital Sanaa on Thursday sparking clashes in which dozens on both sides were killed or wounded, the military and tribesmen said.
“Armed groups of hundreds” attacked an army post in Samaa, 40 kms (25 miles) northeast of Sanaa, the defence ministry news website, 26sep.net, quoted a military official as saying.
A group of “criminal elements” infiltrated the camp while another group “shelled it, using various weapons,” killing or wounding several soldiers, said the official.
The army responded “and both sides clashed fiercely ... bringing massive losses” upon the attackers, said the official.
Tribal sources confirmed casualties, saying that “dozens were killed and wounded” from both sides.
The army called in air support against the tribesmen who took over part of a camp held by Republican Guard troops, loyal to embattled President Ali Abdullah Saleh, the tribal sources said.
No specific tolls were immediately available.

Deputy Information Minister Abdo al-Janadi accused Mansur al-Hanaq, a former member of the influential opposition Islamist Al-Islah (Reform) party, of being behind the attack.
The military official said “these armed criminal elements aimed to control the Samaa camp in an attempt to take over Sanaa International airport as part of their plan to overthrow the constitutional legitimacy and seize power by force,” 26sep.net said.
Meanwhile, in the flashpoint city of Taez, south of Sanaa, a brief ceasefire between pro-opposition armed tribesmen and the police collapsed and clashes resumed on Thursday.
Witnesses said tribesmen shot dead one policeman and wounded another.
Tribesmen, who say their aim is to protect protesters who demand Saleh stand down, have battled security forces loyal to Saleh in Taez since June.
And in another development, an alleged al-Qaeda militant was killed and another captured by tribal forces in the southern province of Abyan, a tribal leader said.
“Firas Taiman ... was killed when he tried to force his way through a checkpoint set up by men from our tribe in Shaqra,” a village 60 kms (36 miles) from the Abyan capital of Zinjibar, said Mohammed Sakin.