Oorlog in Libi� #98: Waar Gaddafi nog altijd op de troon zit...

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Misurata zwaar onder vuur genomen

_{dinsdag 19 april 2011 | 16:47 | Laatst bijgewerkt op: dinsdag 19 april 2011 | 17:02}

MISURATA - De Libische stad Misurata is dinsdag zwaar onder vuur genomen door de troepenmacht van Muammar Kaddafi. Dat hebben ooggetuigen gezegd. Onderwijl zegt de NAVO grote moeite te hebben om de vuurkracht van Kaddafi uit te schakelen.
In het centrum van Misurata waren explosies en schoten te horen, zo meldde een inwoner van de stad. Terwijl regeringstroepen en opstandelingen strijd leverden in de stad, vlogen toestellen van de NAVO over Misurata. Volgens ooggetuigen werden echter geen bombardementen uitgevoerd. Maandag werden wel radarsystemen en luchtverdedigingsinstallaties ten noorden van de stad bestookt.

De Nederlandse NAVO-generaal Mark van Uhm zei dinsdag vanuit Brussel dat er de afgelopen tien dagen fel is gevochten. De NAVO heeft volgens hem meer dan veertig tanks en een aantal pantservoertuigen vernietigd. "De situatie op de grond is erg onberekenbaar, beide partijen weten om en om terreinwinst te boeken."

Hij waarschuwde dat er een limiet is aan wat er kan worden bereikt door middel van luchtaanvallen. "We doen er alles aan om te voorkomen dat er burgerslachtoffers vallen bij onze eigen aanvallen, terwijl we proberen de mogelijkheden van Kaddafi voor het onderhouden van zijn strijdkrachten te verminderen."

Eerder dinsdag zei admiraal Giampaolo di Paola, voorzitter van het militaire comit� van de NAVO, dat het bondgenootschap grote moeite heeft mortieren en raketten van de troepenmacht van Kaddafi uit te schakelen. Hoewel de operaties van de NAVO 'significante schade' hebben toegebracht aan het arsenaal zware wapens van Kaddafi's troepen, beschikken die nog steeds over een aanzienlijke wapenvoorraad, zei Di Paolo.

Op de vraag of er meer vuurkracht en luchtaanvallen van de NAVO nodig zijn, antwoordde de admiraal dat een grotere bijdrage van de bondgenoten welkom is. Gezien het mandaat van de NAVO in Libi�, dat niet toestaat dat er grondtroepen worden ingezet, is het 'erg lastig' om de vuurkracht van het Kaddafi-regime in te dammen.

"Het is geen conventionele oorlog", zei de admiraal. "Het is belangrijk te voorkomen dat Kaddafi het volledige potentieel van zijn vuurkracht kan inzetten. Helaas zijn we er nog niet in geslaagd om hem al zijn vuurkracht te ontnemen, in het bijzonder in de stad zelf." Het is volgens Di Paola erg lastig om de wapens te lokaliseren en uit te schakelen, zonder dat er burgerslachtoffers vallen.

De NAVO voerde maandagavond meerdere aanvallen uit, onder andere op de communicatiemiddelen van Kaddafi. Ook het hoofdkwartier van een legereenheid, even buiten de hoofdstad Tripoli, werd onder vuur genomen. Vanuit deze basis werden volgens de NAVO militaire operaties gericht tegen de Libische bevolking geleid.

� Gelderlander 2011, op dit artikel rust copyright.

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U.N. says 20 children killed in Misrata, wants truce
By Alexander Dziadosz

BENGHAZI, Libya | Tue Apr 19, 2011 11:30am EDT

(Reuters) - The United Nations appealed on Tuesday for a ceasefire in the Libyan city of Misrata, saying at least 20 children had been killed in attacks by besieging government forces on rebel-held parts of the city.

Libya's third city, where hundreds are believed to have been killed by shelling and sniper fire from Muammar Gaddafi's forces, is the main focus of efforts to protect civilians caught up in the Libyan leader's bid to put down an armed rebellion.

But at the same time Western powers are looking for ways to support the rebels in their efforts to topple Gaddafi.

Britain said it would send military officers to advise the rebels on organization and communications, but not train or arm fighters.

And Italy said the international Libya Contact Group was seeking ways to allow the rebels to sell oil produced in the rebel-held east despite a U.N. embargo on Libyan oil sales.

Nine weeks after the rebellion broke out, inspired by uprisings against autocratic rulers elsewhere in the Arab world, a NATO-led air campaign designed to keep Gaddafi's forces out of the air and prevent attacks on civilians has failed to halt the bombardment of Misrata, a city of 300,000 people.

"Fifty days into the fighting in Misrata, the full picture of the toll on children is emerging -- far worse than we had feared and certain to get worse unless there is a ceasefire," said Marixie Mercado of the U.N. children's fund UNICEF.

"We have at least 20 verified child deaths and many more injuries due to shrapnel from mortars and tanks and bullet wounds," she told a news briefing in Geneva.

Aid groups say food, medicines and other basic items are in short supply in the city, and tens of thousands of casualties and foreign workers are waiting at the port to be evacuated.

Many NATO members refuse to go beyond enforcing a U.N.-mandated no-fly zone to attack Gaddafi's forces, despite the urging of the United States, France and Britain.

And some of those who allowed a U.N. Security Council resolution on Libya to pass say that it is being misused to provide military cover for the rebels -- even though fighting now appears to have stalemated on a frontline just west of Ajdabiyah in eastern Libya.

AIR STRIKES

NATO said multiple air strikes on Monday night had targeted Gaddafi's communications infrastructure and the headquarters of his 32nd brigade, 10 km (six miles) south of Tripoli.

Libyan television said Tripoli and the towns of Sirte and al-Aziziyah had been bombed.

At Ajdabiyah's western gate, rebels peered into the desert through binoculars on Tuesday morning at what they said were Gaddafi's forces 30 km (20 miles) away.

Some said that NATO had advised them not to attack so they would not be hit accidentally by air strikes.

But Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Western air support was allowing the Libyan opposition to refuse to sit down to negotiate.

"The U.N. Security Council never aimed to topple the Libyan regime," he said in Belgrade. "All those who are currently using the U.N. resolution for that aim are violating the U.N. mandate. It is crucial to establish a ceasefire."

France said President Nicolas Sarkozy would meet the head of Libya's rebel opposition, Mustafa Abdel Jalil, in Paris on Wednesday, but its foreign minister, Alain Juppe, said that France, like Britain, remained opposed to sending ground troops.

However, the European Union outlined a tentative plan on Monday to do just that, albeit with a non-combat mandate, to protect aid deliveries to Misrata and elsewhere if requested by the United Nations.

Any EU mission could involve military personnel securing the transport of supplies to Libya, in particular Misrata.

The U.N. World Food Program said it had obtained Libyan consent to bring food to western towns affected by the fighting.

Eight trucks entered from Tunisia carrying 240 tones of food -- enough to feed 50,000 people for 30 days -- to towns in the west including Zawiyah, Zintan and Nalut that are mostly under Gaddafi's control after uprisings were crushed by force.

GASOLINE CARGOES

A combination of fighting and U.N. sanctions have caused gasoline shortages in Tripoli and other government-controlled towns in the west.

But state oil official Bashir Guiloushi, who chairs Brega Oil Company, told state television that "we are working to ensure the arrival of successive cargoes of gasoline," without specifying where it was coming from.

He also said the oil refinery at Zawiyah west of Tripoli, where production stopped for several weeks while rebels controlled the city, was now working at full capacity again.

For now, Misrata's lifeline is its port, where humanitarian supply ships have been docking and ferries have been evacuating some of the wounded as well as trapped foreign workers, although many thousands still await a passage to safety.

Chartered ships evacuated almost 1,600 foreign workers and wounded Libyans from the city on Monday.

"There is no electricity. The town is functioning on generators ... the reserves of fuel are being used up," Amnesty International researcher Donatella Rovera told Reuters by telephone from the city. "The supply of water has now been cut off for weeks so, again, what is being used is reserves."

A rebel spokesman said at least 31 people had been killed there on Sunday and Monday by government shelling and snipers, and Rovera said the shelling continued on Tuesday.

Doctors from the Arab Medical Union working in Misrata told the World Health Organization that the 120-bed hospital there was "overwhelmed."

They said around 30 patients with multiple injuries and requiring surgery were being admitted every day.

Libyan officials say they are fighting armed militias with ties to al Qaeda bent on destroying the country, and deny that government troops are shelling Misrata.

The rebels who control the eastern territory around Benghazi had hoped to sell oil produced there to finance the rebellion, but the U.N. sanctions designed to cut off Gaddafi's revenues have prevented them selling more than a trickle. [nN18240152]

Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said he hoped a meeting early next month of the Libya Contact Group -- comprising European and Middle Eastern countries, the United Nations, the African Union and the Arab League -- would agree a way to let the rebels sell oil on world markets.

Speaking after a meeting with Jalil, Frattini said the group would also seek to free up frozen assets belonging to Gaddafi.

(Additional reporting by Ashraf Fahim in Benghazi, Mussab Al-Khairalla in Tripoli, Hamid Ould Ahmed in Algiers, Joseph Nasr in Berlin, Louis Charbonneau at the United Nations, Souhail Karam in Rabat. James Mackenzie in Rome, Matt Falloon, Olesya Dmitracova and Aleksandar Vasovic in Belgrade; Writing by Kevin Liffey; Editing by Giles Elgood)

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Fears of Libya mission creep as British-French advisory team sent to Benghazi

• Joint force HQ indicates serious nature of move
• Gaddafi's communications targeted by Nato

A joint British-French military team of advisers is to be sent to Benghazi in a move that is likely to lead to accusations of mission creep.

Separately, Nato has said its missiles have targeted Gaddafi's communications network. The moves came after rebels warned that the besieged town of Misrata would fall within days.

The UK-French team will advise the rebels on intelligence-gathering, logistics, and communications. In an indication of the serious nature of the move, the team will be run by a joint force headquarters, the Guardian has learned.

Officials stress that the team consists of advisers, rather than trainers, and that the move does not involve arming the rebels. There are no plans for the team to go to Misrata, the officials added.

William Hague, the foreign secretary, said in a statement that the team "will enable the UK to build on the work already being undertaken to support and advise the NTC [National Transitional Council] on how to better protect civilians".

He added: "In particular they will advise the NTC on how to improve their military organisational structures, communications and logistics, including how best to distribute humanitarian aid and deliver medical assistance."

Hague said the British section of the team will consist of "experienced British military officers". UK special forces would not be involved, officials said.

David Davies, the former Conservative frontbencher, has repeated his calls for parliament to be reconvened to discuss changes to the mission in Libya. "A lot of people will see this as mission creep, some of us as an inevitable outcome," he said.

Senior Liberal Democrat Sir Menzies Campbell, his party's former foreign affairs spokesman, warned against becoming bogged down in Libya, similar to the US in Vietnam. He said: "Sending advisers for a limited purpose is probably within the terms of Resolution 1973, but it must not be seen as a first instalment of further military deployment. Vietnam began with an American president sending military advisers. We must proceed with caution."

Hague said the deployment was "fully within the terms of UNSCR 1973 both in respect of civilian protection and its provision expressly ruling out a foreign occupation force on Libyan soil".

Meanwhile, British, French, and Danish aircraft have extended Nato's targets in Libya to include small satellite communications systems and telephone exchanges, officials said. The strikes, which took place over the past two days, were described as representing a clear "shift" in targeting policy, they said.

The British submarine HMS Triumph, returning to the Mediterranean after restocking with Tomahawk missiles, is understood to have fired a number of cruise missiles at Libyan communications targets over the past two days.

Oana Lungescu, Nato's chief spokesperson, told a briefing at the alliance's Brussels headquarters that the coalition had flown more than 2,800 sorties, 1,000 a week, of which half were strike sorties.

Brigadier General Mark van Uhm, Nato's chief of allied operations, described the situation on the ground in Libya as "fluid and changing constantly". Ammunition bunkers, radars, rocket launchers, and tanks, as well as communications structure had been destroyed, "but nothing indicated he had any intention of disengaging his forces".

Van Uhm said over the past 36 hours, Nato air strikes had aimed at degrading Gaddafi's "capacity to command and control, facilities and communicate with his forces". The strikes "will continue until [there is] a clear signal civilians are no longer under threat", he added.

The general said Nato strikes last night hit mobile rocket launchers and armoured vehicles advancing near Misrata. He added: "But there is a limit [to] what can be achieved with air power to stop fighting in a city."

General Lord Dannatt, former head of the British army, described the move to send military adviser to Benghazi as "an entirely logical further step to achieve legitimate aims". He added: "Some will always say 'mission creep', but [Britain should] interpret the UN mandate broadly to avoid mission collapse".

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Op maandag 18 april 2011 09:48 schreef Papierversnipperaar het volgende:

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Op dinsdag 19 april 2011 19:49 schreef Slayage het volgende:
veel pics uit misrata

http://www.militaryphotos(...)sday-April-19th-2011

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Gaddafi violence against Libya civilians exaggerated, says British group

Delegation to Libya says it has found no evidence of dissent and accuses western media of bias towards Nato military action

In other circumstances they could have been a group of British package tourists, clad in identical T-shirts, clambering on and off buses with cameras hanging around their necks.

But Libya has no tourists now, let alone of the package variety. And the 13 Britons who toured the west of the country over eight days, had a self-declared mission: to "find facts" about the situation in Gaddafi-controlled Libya to counter what they described as the manipulation and distortion of the western media.

The group, calling itself British Civilians for Peace in Libya, had found each other through word-of-mouth and the internet. They were, they said, academics, lawyers, a doctor, humanitarian campaigners and "independent journalists", collectively outraged about the attacks on Libyan government forces by "the biggest military force in the world" - Nato.

For some, it was their first visit to Libya. The delegation's leader, David Roberts, 55, from Leicester, said he had been several times before. A Dave Roberts, also from Leicester, is quoted in a web report as addressing a youth conference in Tripoli in 1999, ending his speech with a rousing cry of "Long live Muammar Gaddafi."

At a press conference at the Rixos hotel in Tripoli, before the group left for the Tunisian border, Roberts and his colleagues set out their "interim conclusions".

They had received numerous reports of civilian fatalities caused by Nato bombing, they said, although they presented no evidence. They had uncovered nothing that suggested anti-government protests or dissent, dismissing extensive footage of demonstrators being shot which was obtained and broadcast by the BBC. They had "witnessed substantial support for the government by broad sections of society", while admitting that they had been accompanied by government officials in whose presence no opposition-sympathising Libyan can speak openly.

The group had not visited Misrata, the rebel-held enclave under siege by Gaddafi forces, nor had it investigated the issue of detainees. It had not asked to visit any prisons, and had chosen not to examine the case of Iman al-Obeidi, the Libyan woman who claimed she had been raped multiple times by Gaddafi troops.

Most of the delegation's venom was directed at representatives of the British media sitting before it, who were accused of distortion, manipulation and of "failing in their duty to report the conflict truthfully".

Members of the delegation queued at the microphone to attack the British media, saying it was partisan towards the Nato military action. "Some of the reports from Benghazi and Misrata are totally one-sided," said one. "There is a very high degree of distortion," an Italian film-maker who accompanied the delegation said.

They expressed sympathy for the Libyan regime's restrictions placed on foreign media, which is not allowed to leave the Rixos without a government official and whose movements, even with minders, are highly circumscribed.

"One of the reasons you are being locked up is because your independence is being questioned," Roberts said.

"It's an obvious point - the [Libyan] government feels it is in a war situation, and feels the western press is facilitating this," said another, implying that the media might call in co-ordinates for airstrikes to Nato.

"There are media who identify with this crime [Nato bombing]," said one. They said there was "a groundswell of anger against the western media" among Libyans – sentiments not witnessed by the media corps itself.

The press conference became heated as members of the group wrestled the microphone from their colleagues. Eventually the group departed, copies of the conclusions of their "fact-finding mission" tucked under arms and in briefcases. It would use them as a launch pad for a campaign in the UK, Roberts said. And it intended to mount a similar mission to eastern Libya next month.

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Op dinsdag 19 april 2011 20:40 schreef Renaldo het volgende:

This is how rebels from Benghazi treat injured prisoners.

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Op dinsdag 19 april 2011 19:42 schreef Slayage het volgende:
dit is ook een relevant artikel voor de topic, de libische olievoorraden zijn uiteraard ook al verdeeld, het is alleen wachten op het lekken van de stukken

http://www.independent.co(...)of-iraq-2269610.html

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Op dinsdag 19 april 2011 21:55 schreef Papierversnipperaar het volgende:

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Op maandag 18 april 2011 21:06 schreef waht het volgende:

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Interessante vraag.

Als ik de olie-infrastructuur van Libi� bekijk zouden zowel Kadaffi als de rebellen toegang moeten hebben tot zowel olievelden als een of meerdere raffinaderijen. Ik las ergens ook dat er niet zozeer een tekort aan brandstof is maar dat het simpelweg te gevaarlijk is om brandstof naar het front te brengen. Voor het leger van Kadaffi zal dat een kleiner probleem zijn omdat zij daar materieel voor hebben. Voor de gewone bevolking in de gebieden waar gevochten wordt is die voorziening er niet. Maar je hebt vast het bericht gelezen dat de rebellen begonnen zijn met exporteren van olie vanuit een haven in Tobruk, wat aangeeft dat ze toegang hebben tot aardolie. In Tobruk zit bovendien ook een olieraffinaderij.

[ afbeelding ]

Kadaffi is nog niet zo wanhopig dat hij de olie-infrastructuur in het oosten van Libi� heeft vernield, afgezien van de raffinaderij in Ras Lanuf, die puur bedoeld is voor olie-export.

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Westerse journalisten getroffen bij mortieraanval Misrata

Bij een mortieraanval op de Libische stad Misrata is in ieder geval een westerse journalist om het leven gekomen en zouden er drie gewond geraakt zijn, meldt persbureau AFP.

Er komen op dit moment tegenstrijdige berichten naar buiten over de identiteit van de journalisten. AFP bevestigt dat een van de gewonden de 41-jarige Amerikaan Chris Hondros is. Hij is met ernstige verwondingen opgenomen in het ziekenhuis.

Eerder werd door Businessinsider gemeld dat Hondros en fotograaf Tim Hetherington gedood waren bij de aanval.

Ook The British Journal of Photography meldt dat Hetherington overleden is. Zij baseren zich op een facebookbericht van collega Andr� Liohn;

“Sad news Tim Hetherington died in Misrata now when covering the front line. Chris Hondros is in a serious status. Michel Brown and Guy are wounded but fine.”

De Britse Hetherington werd dit jaar voor een Oscar genomineerd voor zijn documentaire Restrepo. Hondros werkt als fotograaf onder andere voor Newsweek, de New York Times en The Economist.

De identiteit van de verslaggevers of fotografen die lichte verwondingen hebben, is nog niet bevestigd.

Gisteren berichtte Hetherington nog over de ongerichte aanvallen van de troepen van Gaddafi op Misrata:

In besieged Libyan city of Misrata. Indiscriminate shelling by Qaddafi forces. No sign of NATO.
Apr 19, 2011 @ 10:46 AM from Twitter for iPhone

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Op woensdag 20 april 2011 19:51 schreef Papierversnipperaar het volgende:

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