Libya Live Blog - March 24

Libya Live Blog - March 24

• Timestamp: 

  4:57pm

  Detained government soldiers and suspected mercenaries are kept in a former military prison near Benghazi, now taken over by rebels. Some of the men admit to serving with Gaddafi's forces, but say they had no other choice, but to fire at rebels and civilians during battles for cities in the east of the country:

  Abul Majid Mohammed, who served in the Al Fadila Battalion of the army, told Reuters news agency:

  If anybody refused to open fire they would kill them, or burn them alive and on our eyes they killed soldiers who refused to fight.

  
  [Photo Reuters]

• Timestamp: 

  4:54pm

  ABC News reports that the Libyan warplane that was allegedly shot down by French fighter jets today was a "galeb" single-engine military aircraft.

• Timestamp: 

  4:12pm

  Jordan says its assistance to the international coalition action against the Libyan regime will be solely humanitarian.

  Information Minister Taher Adwan told AFP news agency:

  We will provide ambulances or humanitarian aid. We will not take part in actions on the ground in Libya

  Adwan comment comes a day after British prime minister David Cameron said Kuwait and Amman will provide "logistic contributions".

• Timestamp: 

  3:49pm

  Six Dutch F-16’s are about to depart from the Netherlands to the Italian island of Sardinia, from where they will be part of the international alliance enforcing the no-fly zone over Libya. The Dutch ministry of defence stresses that the jets will not be used for attack purposes.

• Timestamp: 

  3:31pm

  A French fighter jet shot down a Libyan warplane violating the no-fly zone over the country, ABC News reports on its website.

• Timestamp: 

  3:15pm

  Britain's Foreign Secretary William Hague called for NATO to take over control of Libyan operations as soon as possible, and condemned the continued "appalling violence" by its rulers against civilians, Reuters reports.

  Britain, along with other coalition members, has carried out air strikes to enforce a no-fly zone over Libya since Saturday.

  Hague told parliament:

  The case for this action remains utterly compelling, appalling violence against Libyan citizens continues to take place exposing the regime's claims to have ordered a ceasefire to be an utter sham. [...] These coalition operations are currently under United States command, but we want them to transition to NATO command and control as quickly as possible.

• Timestamp: 

  2:14pm

  A ship carrying fuel is bound for Libya, which needs imports to relieve a shortage, a Libyan energy official told Reuters today. The official said Western forces may interdict or attack the ship.

• Timestamp: 

  1:52pm

  The US Naval Institute has released his handy map showing the location and nationality of the international forces brought to bear against Gaddafi:

  

• Timestamp: 

  1:36pm

  Wadah Khanfar, Al Jazeera's director-general, has issued a statement pledging to make the captivity of four Al Jazeera Arabic journalists "the main headline of all our news" until they are released.

  Correspondents Ahmed Vall Ould Addin and Lotfi al-Messaoudi and cameramen Kamel Atalua and Ammar al-Hamdan have been held for five days.

  "In this context we must mention our bureau in Yemen, which is going through a lot of hardships right now," Khanfar wrote. "Our office has been stormed and robbed under the nose of the police force who stood watching."

• Timestamp: 

  11:28am

  Reuters photographer Goran Tomasevic snapped this photograph on Monday. It shows a rebel gunman at a checkpoint aiming his AK-47 at a man protecting another man who the fighter believes is a Gaddafi sympathizer, and shows how fluid the situation in Libya can be:

  

• Timestamp: 

  11:24am

  Al Jazeera's Tony Birtley follows up on the story of Ahmed Mohammed, a boy shot in the chest during Gaddafi's final push on Benghazi on Saturday morning, before Western warplanes began enforcing the no-fly, no-drive zone:

• Timestamp: 

  11:05am

  Al Jazeera's Laurence Lee says 28 ambassadors to NATO have just begun their fourth-straight day of negotiations to determine whether and how NATO can assume command of the military intervention against Gaddafi.

• Timestamp: 

  10:43am

  Tunisia has joined the United States and European Union in freezing Libyan assets, an anonymous Tunisian government source told Reuters today. Tunisia froze assets belong to Gaddafi and five of his family members.

• Timestamp: 

  10:39am

  French foreign minister Alain Juppe said at a press conference today that he hopes the international military intervention in Libya serves as a warning to governments in Syria, Saudi Arabi and elsewhere.

  He also said he believes the campaign against Gaddafi may take days or weeks, but not months.

• Timestamp: 

  10:29am

  The top NATO military commander, US admiral James Stavridis, is in Turkey today, the AP reports. He is meeting with high-ranking military officers a day after discussing operations in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya with Turkish foreign minister Ahmet Davutoglu.

  Objections by Turkey, a NATO member, are reported to be one reason why the western military alliance has not been able to agree about taking over command of the military campaign against the Gaddafi regime.

• Timestamp: 

  9:55am

  The Telegraph newspaper's Rob Crilly wrote a short dispatch last night from Benghazi, describing the effort by rebels to root out Gaddafi "sleeper cells" in the area. 

  Young gunmen haul three men and a woman from a car at a roadblock at night, beat them, interrogate them and take them away to an "uncertain fate".

• Timestamp: 

  8:53am

  Libya's fairly tight-lipped opposition national council has opened up, or at least one of its members has.

  US-educated Ali Tarhouni, the newly appointed finance minister for the council, spoke with reporters last night and revealed that the rebel army consists of only around 1,000 trained men. (He apparently didn't mention how many untrained volunteers are involved in the fighting.) Until now, the opposition has kept military details under wraps. 

  Tarhouni admitted shortcomings in the rebel's pell-mell ascent to power in the east.

  "There was a total vacuum," he said.

  Tarhouni also said the rebels don't have a cash crisis, despite being cut off from Tripoli. Countries have agreed to give the rebels credit, including the United Kingdom, which will give $1.1 billion, he claimed.

• Timestamp: 

  8:01am

  More than 290,000 people have fled Libya due to the conflict there, and another 600,000 still inside the country are in need of humanitarian assistance, the International Medical Corps said in a statement released on Tuesday.

   Libya's border with Tunisia remains closed, but IMC is sending supplies through. In the east, IMC is still trying to reach Ajdabiya, south of Benghazi, the scene of fighting for the past week.

  A team from Doctors Without Borders, which left Libya last week as Gaddafi's forces neared Benghazi, is waiting for a guarantee from all parties "that medical staff will be respected and allowed to work freely" before it returns.

• Timestamp: 

  7:38am

  The Washington Post has a nice tick-tock piece on how the US treasury department was able to identify and freeze nearly $30 billion in assets connected to the Libyan regime in around 72 hours - an unprecedented feat in the history of sanctions.

• Timestamp: 

  7:21am

  Sixty per cent of Americans support the coalition military effort against Gaddafi, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released today. Around two-thirds of those surveyed had a positive reaction to president Barack Obama's decision-making, calling it either "cautious and consultative" or "strong and decisive". Thirty-six percent described it was "indecisive and dithering".

  John Boehner, the Republican speaker of the House of Represenatives, criticised Obama in a letter yesterday, saying he appeared to have consulted more with the United Nations and "foreign entities" than with the American people and Congress.

  The poll was taken on Tuesday, three days after the air campaign began. 

• Timestamp: 

  6:48am

  This video posted on YouTube last night by user zintan2011 purports to be images of a destroyed regime tank near the town of Zintan, which has been the scene of back-and-forth fighting in recent days:

• Timestamp: 

  6:36am

  One of our team in the east reports that Ajdabiya Hospital is under "regular attack" these days and that most of the doctors have left.

• Timestamp: 

  6:29am

  Libyan regime officials took journalists on a trip yesterday to the town of Bani Walid, around 150km southeast of Tripoli, to demonstrate support for Gaddafi in the area, according to the AP. The Warfalla tribe, Libya's largest, is strong in Bani Walid.

  Some residents told reporters they had recently received weapons from the regime, which has also distributed money to the Warfalla, according to western intelligence sources, the AP said.  

• Timestamp: 

  5:28am

  The latest casualty figures in Misurata, according to the opposition, are 14 dead and 23 injured, one of our team member's on the ground says.

• Timestamp: 

  3:53am

  The New York Times has a nice map showing which cities are in the hands of the opposition and where the latest fighting has been reported.

• Timestamp: 

  3:15am

  Reuters quotes residents saying a loud explosion has been heard in Tripoli. 

  "We heard another explosion just now. We see smoke rising. There are people on rooftops. It seems to be in a military area near the engineering college [in the Tajoura area]," one resident said.

• Timestamp: 

  2:46am

  This video from Misurata filmed on Wednesday appears to show show gunfire, sniper fire and a line of tanks in the city.

• Timestamp: 

  2:37am

   

  Deputy Foreign Minister Khaled Kaim has denied allegations that the government has cut off water and electricity supplies to Misurata.

  "We heard those rumours that the government has intentionally cut off supplies," said . "It's just a technical problem because of damage and looting."

  Misurata residents say the city is under attack by government forces who have severed their basic supplies and effectively besieged the last major opposition holdout in western Libya.

  Omar al-Mislati, planning manager for the state water company, said up to 70,000 out of 300,000 people in Misurata had no access to water due a technical problem and damage caused by some of the fighting.

   

• Timestamp: 

  1:14am

  The top Republican in the US Congress has sharpened his criticism of President Barack Obama's handling of military operations in Libya, pressing him over the mission's cost, leadership and exit strategy.

  House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner asked Obama in a letter how he would measure success in Libya and whether Muammar Gaddafi had to depart before the US military involvement ends.

• Timestamp: 

  12:33am

  Libyan state TV reports that Western military powers have attacked civilian and military targets in Jafar, southwest of the capital Tripoli.

  "Military and civilian targets were attacked by colonialist crusaders," the television said, quoting a Libyan military source.

• Timestamp: 

  12:09am

  Libyan state news agency JANA says coalition raids on a residential neighbourhood east of the capital have killed "a large number" of civilians.

• Timestamp: 

  12:03am

  Al Jazeera's Anita McNaught says there has been a series of "very big explosions" in the last hour. She says blasts were heard in "all sorts of directions" but in particular from the vicinity of Gaddafi's compound. There were also reports of a strike on a military base in the district of Tajoura, she said.

• Timestamp: 

  12:00am

  It's midnight in Libya and our live blog continues for another day. To keep track of all that's happened, be sure to check out our blog from yesterday, March 23, here.