| Submit your comments on this article |
| Africa North |
| Besieged Bani Walid residents told to flee |
| 2011-09-14 |
| [Al Jazeera] Libyan rebels battling the remnants of Muammar Qadaffy ...Proof that a madman with money will be politely received for at least 42 years... 's forces in his remaining stronghold of Bani Walid have given residents there two days to leave before a threatened assault. The warning came on Tuesday amid fears for the fate of civilians trapped in the last redoubts of Qadaffy, dislodged from power and now on the run after 42 years as leader of the oil-rich nation. "I think only 10 per cent of the people are Qadaffy supporters. They are fanatics. And the rest are waiting to be liberated. We have given them two more days to leave the city," Abumuslim Abdu, a fighter with the ruling National Transitional Council (NTC), told the Rooters news agency. Forces of the NTC that overran the capital, Tripoli, on August 23 have met unexpectedly stiff resistance in five days of fighting for Bani Walid, 180km southeast of Tripoli. The town - along with Qadaffy's home city of Sirte on the Mediterranean coast and Sabha in the remote southern desert - counts among the last strongholds of the former regime. The resistance has impeded NTC efforts to normalise life in Libya. Residents fleeing Bani Walid have reported days of intense firefights, and NATO ...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. It's headquartered in Belgium. That sez it all.... warplanes were backing up NTC fighters with air strikes on pro-Qadaffy rocket positions. Families trapped there for weeks started to slip out after Qadaffy forces abandoned some checkpoints on the outskirts, and dozens of cars packed with civilians streamed out of the area on Monday and Tuesday. NTC rally Meanwhile, ...back at the wreckage, Captain Poindexter awoke groggily, his hand still stuck in the Ming vase... Mustafa Abdul-Jalil, the head of the NTC, urged a cheering crowd in Tripoli to strive for a civil and democratic state. Abdul-Jalil addressed a crowd of thousands in Martyr's Square, a site that until recently was famous for pro-Qadaffy rallies. Flanked by a few dozen revolutionary leaders in their largest public gathering since their forces stormed the capital, the NTC chief called on Libyans to build a democratic state based on Islamic law. "We seek a state of law, prosperity and one where sharia [Islamic law] is the main source for legislation, and this requires many things and conditions," he said, adding that "extremist ideology" would not be tolerated. "No retribution, no taking matters into your own hands and no oppression. I hope that the revolution will not stumble because of any of these things." From an unknown hideout, Qadaffy urged his remaining followers to keep up the fight. "It is not possible to give Libya to the colonialists again," he said in a statement read out on Syria-based Arrai Oruba television. "All that remains for us is the struggle until victory and the defeat of the coup." The United Nations ...an organization whose definition of human rightsis interesting, to say the least... said it was worried about the plight of civilians stranded inside besieged pro-Qadaffy towns. "Our big concern right now is Sirte, where we are receiving reports that there's no water and no electricity," Valerie Amos, the UN humanitarian chief, told Rooters in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates. Some NTC fighters said they suspected local forces of the Warfalla tribe, Libya's largest, were passing tips to Qadaffy forces in Bani Walid. "We believe there are traitors among them," said Mohammed el Gahdi, from the coastal city of Khoms. Ahmed Bani, the NTC military front man, told news hounds the plan for Bani Walid for now was to wait. "When our forces entered Bani Walid they found the brigades of Qadaffy using citizens as shields," he said, adding that missile launchers had been placed on the roofs of homes, making it difficult for NTC forces or NATO warplanes to strike. |
| Posted by:Fred |