Civilians surge out of Sirte, say food dwindling
(Reuters) - Civilians fled Sirte on Friday as interim government forces pounded the coastal city in an effort to dislodge fighters loyal to ousted leader Muammar Al Qathafi.
The prolonged battle for Al Qathafi's hometown, besieged from three fronts, has raised concern for civilians trapped inside the city of about 100,000 people, with each side accusing the other of endangering them.
Cars streamed out of Sirte from the early hours and into the afternoon. Shelling and tank fire continued from both sides on the eastern and western fronts, black smoke rose from the centre of town and NATO planes flew overhead.
A Reuters team on the edge of Sirte heard five huge explosions just before sundown. It was not immediately clear what had caused the explosions.
Fighting was particularly heavy near a roundabout on the eastern outskirts of the city, where NTC forces have been pinned down by sniper and artillery fire for five days, Reuters journalists at the scene said.
Some fighters again fled the frontline under the fire.
"It's difficult, difficult," said anti-Al Qathafi fighter Rami Moftah. "You know, with the snipers. You can't find them. Yesterday there was no ammunition. It was finished. I swear to God. If the Al Qathafi people knew that they would have come and taken Sirte from us."
Several residents told Reuters they were leaving Sirte because they had not eaten for days.
"I am not scared. I am hungry," said Ghazi Abdul-Wahab, a Syrian who has lived in the town for 40 years, patting his stomach.
Abdul-Wahab said he had been sleeping in the streets with his family after a NATO airstrike hit a building next to his house, making him fear his home could also be struck.
"People inside are scared about their houses. People want to protect their houses," he said, adding that some locals may fight because they have heard the NTC wants to kill them.
"Is this how we're supposed to die?"
Some residents said they had paid up to $800 for the fuel to leave the city because it was in short supply. Others said pasta and flour were now changing hands for large sums of money.
Doctors at a field hospital near the eastern front line said an elderly woman died from malnutrition on Friday morning and they had seen other cases.
A man with a shrapnel wound to his left arm said the hospital in Sirte had no power and few supplies. A doctor had tried to patch up his wound by the light of a mobile phone.
"I was injured in my garden at 1 p.m. but I stayed home until the evening because of the heavy fire," Mohammed Abudullah said at a field hospital outside the city.
Al Qathafi loyalists and some civilians were blaming NATO air strikes and shelling by the forces of the National Transitional Council (NTC) for killing civilians.
NATO and the NTC deny that. They and some other civilians coming out of the town say pro-Al Qathafi fighters are executing people they believe to be NTC sympathisers.
"It is not the Al Qathafi people and not you people," one elderly man shouted, gesturing towards NTC fighters at a checkpoint as he left the city.
"It's the French planes that are hitting us night and day. They knocked the roof off our house. Is this how we're supposed to die?"
Ahmad Mohammed Yahya told Reuters street fighting was erupting in the town most nights and that pro-Al Qathafi fighters were aggressively recruiting local people.
"Sometimes they offer to give you a weapon," he said. "And sometimes they take people and force them to fight."
The NTC is under pressure to strike a balance between a prolonged fight that would delay its efforts to govern and a quick victory which, if too bloody, could worsen regional divisions and embarrass the fledgling government and its foreign backers.
Humanitarian disaster
Aid agencies said this week a humanitarian disaster loomed in Sirte amid rising casualties and shrinking supplies of water, electricity and food.
Libya's interim government has asked the United Nations for fuel for ambulances to evacuate its wounded fighters from Sirte, a UN source in Libya said on Thursday.
The UN is sending trucks of drinking water for the civilians crammed into vehicles on the road from Sirte, heading either towards Benghazi to the east or Misurata to the west, he added.
But fighting around the city and continuing insecurity around Bani Walid, the other loyalist hold-out, are preventing the world body from deploying aid workers inside, he said.
"There are two places we'd really like access to, Sirte and Bani Walid, because of concern on the impact of conflict on the civilian population," the UN source in Tripoli, speaking by telephone on condition of anonymity, told Reuters in Geneva.
The NTC says efforts to form a new interim government have been suspended until after the capture of Sirte and Bani Walid.
There has been speculation that divisions are preventing the formation of a more inclusive interim government.
More than a month after NTC fighters captured Tripoli, Al Qathafi remains on the run, trying to rally resistance to those who ended his 42-year rule.
The military chief of Libya's new interim government attended a meeting on Friday between Tuareg tribesmen and local Arabs in the southwestern town of Ghadames aimed at patching up differences that have recently spilled over into violence.
The Saharan trading town close to the Algerian border drew international attention this week when an NTC official said Al Qathafi was believed to be hiding nearby.
Libyans flee raging battles in Sirte
(aljazeera.net) - Aid agencies say humanitarian crisis looms as NTC forces launch offensive to take control of Al Qathafi stronghold. A humanitarian disaster looms in Sirte as supplies run low amid raging battles.
Libya's interim government forces have launched an assault on the coastal city of Sirte in an effort to dislodge fighters loyal to the country's deposed leader.
The prolonged battle for Muammar Al Qathafi's hometown, besieged from three fronts, has raised mounting concern for civilians trapped inside the city of about 100,000 people, with each side accusing the other of endangering them.
Cars drove out of Sirte from the early hours of Friday, while shelling and tank fire continued from both sides on the eastern and western fronts.
Black smoke rose from the centre of the city and NATO jets flew overhead.
Al Qathafi loyalists and some civilians have accused NATO air raids and shelling by the forces of the National Transitional Council (NTC) of killing civilians.
Both NATO and the NTC deny the accusations. Civilians coming out of Sirte say pro-Al Qathafi fighters are executing people they believe to be NTC sympathisers.
More than a month after NTC fighters captured Tripoli, Al Qathafi remains on the run, trying to rally resistance to those who ended his 42-year rule.
Humanitarian crisis
Aid agencies said this week that a humanitarian disaster loomed in Sirte amid rising casualties and shrinking supplies of water, electricity and food.
Doctors at a field hospital near the eastern front line said an elderly woman died from malnutrition on Friday morning and they had seen other cases.
Reports say families have not eaten for days and the wounded are unable to be transported to hospitals for treatment.
Medical sources say even if the wounded do reach hospitals, doctors are unable to tend to their injuries due to lack of power and limited supplies.
The NTC has asked the UN for fuel for ambulances to evacuate its wounded fighters from Sirte, a UN source in Libya told the Reuters news agency on Thursday.
The UN is sending trucks of drinking water for the civilians crammed into vehicles on the road from Sirte, heading either towards Benghazi to the east or Misurata to the west, he added.
But fighting around the city and continuing insecurity around Bani Walid, the other Al Qathafi bastion, are preventing the world body from deploying aid workers inside, he said.
"There are two places we'd really like access to, Sirte and Bani Walid, because of concern on the impact of conflict on the civilian population," the UN source in Tripoli said
The NTC is under pressure to strike a balance between a prolonged fight that would delay its efforts to govern and a quick victory which, if too bloody, could worsen regional divisions and embarrass the fledgeling government and its foreign backers.
The NTC says efforts to form a new interim government have been suspended until after the capture of Sirte and Bani Walid.
"There are no negotiations at the moment to form a transitional government after the NTC decided to keep the current formation to facilitate the [country's] affairs until the land is liberated," Mahmoud Jibril, Libya's de facto prime minister, said in Tripoli on Thursday.
"There are two fronts, Sirte and Bani Walid. I hope those two areas would be liberated soon so that we can start forming a new interim government."
Jibril ruled out any role for himself in a future government.
There has been speculation that divisions are preventing the formation of a more inclusive interim government.
Al Qathafi compound becomes hangout for Libyans
(Washington Post) - On a breezy Friday, the Muslim day of rest, carloads of families pushed to get through a bottleneck at the walled entrance of a place that once, they’d never dare enter.
“Looking for Frizzhead?” cracked a taxi driver, using a nickname for Muammar Al Qathafi, who used to live here. “Right this way!”
Inside the tree-shaded compound of Bab al-Azziziyah, abandoned by the Libyan leader as rebels closed in last month, the families cruised around slowly, gawking at blackened, looted buildings like tourists on safari.
The golden rifles and Al Qathafi family photos are gone, but the sprawling labyrinth of homes and offices still attracts Libyans from around the country, eager to glimpse the inner chambers of a fallen empire.
In a partially collapsed building that apparently fell victim to a NATO bomb, Najmaldin Mohamad al-Ghoruda, 53, led his five young daughters over mounds of shattered glass and broken green marble. “I came from Gharyan, 80 kilometres from here, just to see this,” said Ghoruda, a school headmaster.
Two of the girls ran up with small green booklets they had found in the rubble - Al Qathafi-era propaganda. For a moment they seemed unsure what to do.
Then they started ripping the books to shreds. Their father smiled. “We need to change only one subject in schools,” he said, “the political thoughts.”
A short drive away, the graffiti-scarred building where Al Qathafi famously promised to hunt down the rebels “alley by alley” now looked like a cross between a county fairground and a punk-rocker squat.
Concession stands sold headbands, hand-crocheted purses, lapel pins and infant-size hoodies trumpeting the red, black and green of the new flag. Teenagers danced, sang and played drums on the balcony, and townspeople on the roof held flags aloft.
Young men wearing the mismatched fatigues of the rebel army wove through the crowd in mud-streaked pickup trucks, occasionally raising their guns and shooting off a few rounds - a common, often unnerving, celebratory ritual in free Libya.
Some were freshly arrived that day from the contested town of Bani Walid. For many, the line that separates normal life from the heat of war has been erased. The fighting nearly over, they roam unchecked through a land that as yet has no constitution and no laws other than those governing decent behavior.
During daylight, the civilians at Bab al-Azziziyah outnumbered the fighters. Isra Alarbae, 18, a medical student, stepped carefully in high heels across the sandy grove that had become a parking lot and picnic spot.
She wrinkled her nose: “I hate this place. Because, you know, he was here.” She and a friend stopped at a souvenir stand, where the friend bought a small, ruffled red, black and green dress for a one-year-old.
A 15-year-old boy walked by in a crisp T-shirt bearing the image of Che Guevara, whose face has appeared on bumper stickers since the beginning of the revolution, and whose long hair and beret have been adopted by some of the rebels. “I don’t know who he is,” the boy, Abdul Majid, admitted a little sheepishly. “I just like him.”
Inside the building, families peered at formal sitting room furniture coated in debris. Teenage boys leapt down a curved staircase, taking the steps in threes.
In a side room, two little girls in jeans and pink and purple T-shirts posed with a machine gun as relatives snapped photos - until one of their mothers rushed up in a panic and ordered them to keep away from the gun.
On the roof, Mohammad al-Rammah, 23, said his mother had no such qualms about the Russian sniper rifle he had picked up off a dead loyalist soldier in June. He patted it and grinned: “I was so excited that I taught myself - and the other rebels, too. We all taught each other how to use them.”
Rammah said that once the fighting ends, he will return to flight school and give up his gun. But “it is not simple to get used to the change,” he said. “I’m in the revolution for six months, so it will be hard for me.”
As the sun grew low, a man standing at the edge of the roof started firing over the crowd. Another joined him, and they were answered by bursts of shooting from the ground.
Parents grabbed children and ran for cover. The gunfire increased, sending sparks into the darkening sky. A young woman ran up to the shooters and screamed at them to stop. They ignored her.
Finally, a burly man in a baseball cap paused, clearly pleased by the attention. “Don’t worry,” he said with a friendly smile. “It’s safe, it’s safe. We’re just shooting to say we’re sorry for the people who were killed here.”
The man, Waleed Khatrish, 32, said that once the war ended, he planned to return to his job as an engineer at an oil company.
But he would love to keep his gun, a Kalashnikov he picked up off a dead Al Qathafi soldier. “In my heart, if they let me, I would like to have it inside my house,” he said. “Just to remember the things that happened to me.”
Rights group calls on Libyans to stop prisoner abuse, citing random detentions and beatings
(Washington Post/AP) - Human Rights Watch called on Libya’s new rulers to stop armed groups from rounding up suspected Muammar Al Qathafi supporters and abusing them, saying Friday that some detainees reporting beatings and electric shocks had the scars to prove it.
The treatment of prisoners has become a litmus test for the transitional government as it tries to rein in young men who fought in the civil war that ousted Al Qathafi and now refuse to lay down their weapons.
The New York-based rights group said it had visited 20 detention facilities in Tripoli and interviewed 53 inmates, including 37 Libyans and 16 sub-Saharan Africans. Five were considered “high value” because of their positions in Al Qathafi’s government, the report said, without elaborating.
Human Rights Watch, which said it was given unrestricted access to the detainees, said the allegations were even more troubling because Al Qathafi’s regime was known to torture and kill inmates in its prisons.
“After all that Libyans suffered in Muammar Al Qathafi’s jails, it’s disheartening that some of the new authorities are subjecting detainees to arbitrary arrest and beatings today,” said Joe Stork, the organisation’s regional director.
“The NTC (National Transitional Council) owes it to the people of Libya to show that they will institute the rule of law from the start.”
Libyan officials have pledged to respect human rights, but they have struggled to bring discipline to the largely untrained fighters who took up arms against Al Qathafi.
The group said it was encouraged that the de facto prime minister, Mahmoud Jibril, promised to make ending prisoner abuse a priority. “Prisoner abuse of any kind is not acceptable,” he was quoted as saying. “We joined the revolution to end such mistreatment, not to see it continue in any form.”
The group said some of the dark-skinned Libyans and detainees from sub-Saharan Africa were even forced to do manual labor, including carrying heavy materials, cleaning and renovating buildings around Tripoli or on military bases.
Human Rights Watch blamed part of the problem on a lack of oversight and security forces operating with little experience. It gave credit to some groups, saying one apparently issued arrest warrants, conditions had improved in some facilities and some abusive guards had been arrested themselves and replaced.
But the group urged the NTC to make it a priority to bring the various neighborhood militias and security brigades under a unified command and set clear standards for their conduct.
The report was based on prison visits between August 31 - nearly two weeks after revolutionary forces seized control of Tripoli after days of fierce battles with Al Qathafi’s supporters - and Thursday. HRW said thousands had been jailed, including women and children, and none had been brought before a judge.
Detainees who reported abuse said guards had beaten them, sometimes on a daily basis. The names of detainees and facilities were not released because of fear of reprisals against those interviewed.
A sub-Saharan African identified only as Mohammed wept as he showed Human Rights Watch welts on his arms, back and neck that he said were from beatings by guards at a small detention centre.
Seven prisoners in two facilities, including women, said guards had given them electric shocks.
US Sen. John McCain, a Republican from Arizona, raised the issue of prisoner abuse Thursday as he led a Republican delegation to Tripoli. In a message to Libyans, he said the world was inspired by their success in overthrowing Al Qathafi but they must respect human rights.
“This can be a showcase of what the Arab Spring is all about, but if you don’t watch it, you can go backward even here,” he said.
The Republican delegation was one of a series of visits by foreign leaders and dignitaries as the international community rallies around Libya’s new leadership, which is struggling to form a new government despite continued fighting on three fronts.
Italy’s Foreign Minister Franco Frattini traveled to Tripoli on Friday. He said his country has authorisation to unfreeze 2.5 billion euros ($3.4 billion) in frozen Libyan assets to help the North African nation rebuild.
Italy is sending a team of experts to discuss how to disburse the funds to best help the Libyan people.
Jibril, the prime minister, has asked the UN Security Council to lift some economic sanctions that had been imposed on Al Qathafi’s regime and allow the release of tens of billions of frozen dollars to the transitional government. Some countries have won approval to release funds on a limited basis.
“The decision is taken, authorization is there,” Frattini said at a joint news conference with Jibril. “Now upon request of the Libyan friends we will be able to mobilize ... money for urgent projects.”
Frattini - who was in the then-rebel eastern stronghold of Benghazi in May - also noted the Italian energy giant Eni has signed an agreement to reactivate oil and natural gas plants under Italian management and hopes to get natural gas, another mainstay of Libya’s economy, flowing to Italy again through the Greenstream pipeline by October.
Libya officer at Tuareg-Arab talks in desert town
(Reuters) - The military chief of Libya's new interim government attended a meeting on Friday between Tuareg tribesmen and local Arabs in the southwestern town of Ghadames aimed at patching up differences that have recently spilled over into violence.
The Saharan trading town close to the Algerian border drew international attention this week when an official of the interim authorities, the National Transitional Council (NTC), said deposed ruler Muammar Al Qathafi was believed to be hiding in the region.
NTC military chief Suleiman Mahmoud al-Obeidi did not comment on the report or on the hunt for Al Qathafi as he prepared to enter the meeting in the town about 600 km southwest of the capital Tripoli.
"I am now here to to witness the agreement between Ghadames and the Tuareg. There has been a problem since July 17," he told Reuters.
Al-Obeidi, a veteran of the 1969 coup that brought Al Qathafi to power, said he had joined the revolution on the 20th day of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan.
"On the 17th of Ramadan Al Qathafi sent me 1,000 weapons to attack the city of Darnah, but I refused to do that ... and on the 18th of Ramadan he sent to me mercenaries with the same intention but I refused. On the 20th of Ramadan I joined the revolution."
Al Qathafi attack?
Tuareg tribesmen have fought skirmishes in the Ghadames area this month with armed groups affiliated to Libya's interim government, in a conflict that highlighted the challenges Libya's new rulers face in winning over fractious tribes.
Tuaregs, nomads who roam the desert spanning the borders of Libya and its neighbours, backed Al Qathafi and view the NTC with suspicion.
NTC officials in Tripoli said at the weekend the town, which is under the control of their forces, had been attacked by Al Qathafi's military forces, possibly tied to one of Al Qathafi's sons, Khamis.
But other sources have said it was a clash between Tuaregs and townspeople -- a more worrying version of events for the NTC because it shows the deep divisions in Libyan society that will remain even if the last of Al Qathafi's forces are defeated.
Many Tuaregs back Al Qathafi because he supported their rebellion against the governments of Mali and Niger in the 1970s and later allowed many of them to settle in southern Libya.
The tribe is important to regional security because the Tuareg have huge influence in the vast, empty desert expanses which are often exploited by drug traffickers and Islamist militants as a safe haven for their operations.
Italy to help Libya's rebuilding, ready to unfreeze assets
(Xinhua) - Italy's priority is to cooperate with Libya's new rulers in the reconstruction of the worn-torn nation, visiting Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said here Friday.
The Italian government has agreed to receive more Libyans who were wounded in the civil war, and help with the ruling National Transitional Council (NTC) build 13 schools in Libya, according to a joint press conference in the capital Tripoli, which was also hosted by Mahmoud Jibril, chairman of the NTC's executive office.
Frattini meanwhile told reporters that Italy will give the previously-frozen assets of the fallen Muammar Al Qathafi's regime to the legitimate representative of the Libyan people. The amount is expected to be 2.5 billion euro (about 3.5 billion US dollars).
Italy, which has taken part in the NATO-led air raids over Libya earlier this year with the aim of toppling Al Qathafi's rule, has a number of energy deals with the oil-rich North African country.
Italian companies, if permitted, will also provide assistance in recovering telecommunications in the eastern part of Libya, Frattini said, adding that Rome is also lend a hand in rebuilding the ports and airport in Tripoli.
Italian air companies will open the Rome-Tripoli route this November, while flights from the Italian capital to Benghazi, Libya's second largest city, are expected to start early 2012, Frattini said.
Meanwhile, Jibril said the NTC has talked with the Italian side on holding a meeting to discuss ways to speed up Libya's reconstruction process.
Frattini's visit came after the ones made by a US Senate delegation the previous day, and by British, French and Turkish leaders earlier this month.
Civilians flee besieged town of Sirte
(Irish Times) - Civilians fled Sirte today as interim government forces pounded the coastal city in an effort to dislodge fighters loyal to ousted leader Muammar Al Qathafi.
The prolonged battle for Col Al Qathafi's hometown, besieged from three fronts, has raised concern for civilians trapped inside the city of about 100,000 people, with each side accusing the other of endangering them.
Cars streamed out of Sirte from the early hours and into the afternoon. Shelling and tank fire continued from both sides on the eastern and western fronts, black smoke rose from the centre of town and NATO planes flew overhead.
A Reuters team on the edge of Sirte heard five huge explosions just before sundown. It was not immediately clear what had caused the explosions.
Fighting was particularly heavy near a roundabout on the eastern outskirts of the city, where NTC forces have been pinned down by sniper and artillery fire for five days, journalists at the scene said.
Some fighters again fled the frontline under the fire.
"It's difficult, difficult," said anti-Al Qathafi fighter Rami Moftah. "You know, with the snipers. You can't find them. Yesterday there was no ammunition. It was finished. I swear to God. If the Al Qathafi people knew that they would have come and taken Sirte from us."
Several residents said they were leaving Sirte because they had not eaten for days.
"I am not scared. I am hungry," said Ghazi Abdul-Wahab, a Syrian who has lived in the town for 40 years, patting his stomach.
Abdul-Wahab said he had been sleeping in the streets with his family after a NATO airstrike hit a building next to his house, making him fear his home could also be struck.
"People inside are scared about their houses. People want to protect their houses," he said, adding that some locals may fight because they have heard the NTC wants to kill them.
Some residents said they had paid up to $800 for the fuel to leave the city because it was in short supply. Others said pasta and flour were now changing hands for large sums of money.
Doctors at a field hospital near the eastern front line said an elderly woman died from malnutrition this morning and they had seen other cases.
A man with a shrapnel wound to his left arm said the hospital in Sirte had no power and few supplies. A doctor had tried to patch up his wound by the light of a mobile phone.
"I was injured in my garden at 1pm but I stayed home until the evening because of the heavy fire," Mohammed Abudullah said at a field hospital outside the city.
Al Qathafi loyalists and some civilians were blaming NATO air strikes and shelling by the forces of the National Transitional Council (NTC) for killing civilians.
NATO and the NTC deny that. They and some other civilians coming out of the town say pro-Al Qathafi fighters are executing people they believe to be NTC sympathisers.
"It is not the Al Qathafi people and not you people," one elderly man shouted, gesturing towards NTC fighters at a checkpoint as he left the city.
"It's the French planes that are hitting us night and day. They knocked the roof off our house.
Is this how we're supposed to die?" Ahmad Mohammed Yahya told Reuters street fighting was erupting in the town most nights and that pro-Al Qathafi fighters were aggressively recruiting local people.
"Sometimes they offer to give you a weapon," he said. "And sometimes they take people and force them to fight."
The NTC is under pressure to strike a balance between a prolonged fight that would delay its efforts to govern and a quick victory which, if too bloody, could worsen regional divisions and embarrass the fledgling government and its foreign backers.
Aid agencies said this week a humanitarian disaster loomed in Sirte amid rising casualties and shrinking supplies of water, electricity and food.
Libya's interim government has asked the United Nations for fuel for ambulances to evacuate its wounded fighters from Sirte, a UN source in Libya said yesterday.
The UN is sending trucks of drinking water for the civilians crammed into vehicles on the road from Sirte, heading either towards Benghazi to the east or Misurata to the west, he added.
But fighting around the city and continuing insecurity around Bani Walid, the other loyalist hold-out, are preventing the world body from deploying aid workers inside, he said.
"There are two places we'd really like access to, Sirte and Bani Walid, because of concern on the impact of conflict on the civilian population," the UN source in Tripoli said.
The NTC says efforts to form a new interim government have been suspended until after the capture of Sirte and Bani Walid.
There has been speculation that divisions are preventing the formation of a more inclusive interim government.
More than a month after NTC fighters captured Tripoli, Al Qathafi remains on the run, trying to rally resistance to those who ended his 42-year rule.
The military chief of Libya's new interim government attended a meeting on Friday between Tuareg tribesmen and local Arabs in the southwestern town of Ghadames aimed at patching up differences that have recently spilled over into violence.
The Saharan trading town close to the Algerian border drew international attention this week when an NTC official said Col Al Qathafi was believed to be hiding nearby.
Libya probes Al Qathafi spokesman's 'capture'
(France 24) - Libya's new rulers were on Friday probing the whereabouts of the public voice of Muammar Al Qathafi's regime as a television channel said it would air footage of Moussa Ibrahim being detained disguised as a woman.
National Transitional Council (NTC) commanders said they had received reports from fighters on the ground that Ibrahim had been captured outside Al Qathafi's hometown of Sirte, where his loyalists have been under siege for the past week.
But the fighters' high command in Libya's third-largest city Misurata said it was unable to confirm the capture of Ibrahim, who has kept up a steady stream of pro-Al Qathafi broadcasts from unknown locations while on the run.
"Misurata fighters contacted us and gave us the information that Moussa Ibrahim has been captured," said Mustafa bin Dardef of the NTC's Zintan Brigade.
Another commander, Mohammed al-Marimi, said: "Moussa Ibrahim was captured while driving outside Sirte by fighters from Misurata."
He said there were reports that Ibrahim was dressed as a woman, but could not immediately confirm that.
Libya's Al-Hurra Misurata television said it would broadcast footage of Ibrahim's capture, adding that the images showed him being detained in the back of a car outside Sirte wearing a veil.
However, a spokesman for the Misurata military council, Adel Ibrahim, told AFP late on Thursday: "We cannot confirm he was arrested."
And a pro-Al Qathafi website denied that his long-time spokesman had been captured.
"Moussa Ibrahim has not been captured," the website of the former state television channel Allibiya said.
"This is a mendacious rumour aimed at distracting attention from the rebels'... defeat at the hands of the heroic forces in Sirte."
Since NTC fighters overran Tripoli on August 23, Ibrahim has continued to issue statements through Syrian-based Arrai television from an unknown location, although not so frequently in recent days.
Late last week, he appealed for resolve against "agents and traitors," denounced what he called "genocide" by NATO and its "Libyan agents," and criticised the world community for "inaction."
NTC efforts to secure the extradition of fugitive members of Al Qathafi's family and inner circle, meanwhile, took a blow with a rebuff from neighbouring Niger to an arrest notice issued by global police agency Interpol for the toppled leader's playboy son Saadi.
Niger Prime Minister Brigi Rafini said his government had no plans for the time being to hand over Saadi, 38, who has been under house arrest in the capital Niamey since fleeing across the desert border on September 11.
"Saadi Al Qathafi is in safety, in security in Niamey, in the hands of the Niger government. There's no question of him being extradited to Libya for the moment," Rafini told AFP on a visit to France.
"We need to be sure he will be allowed a fair defence," he said. "Are those conditions in place today? No."
Interpol said in a statement from its Lyon headquarters that Saadi was wanted "for allegedly misappropriating properties through force and armed intimidation when he headed the Libyan Football Federation."
"It urged member states to help locate him" with a view to returning him to Libya where his arrest warrant has been issued.
"As the commander of military units allegedly involved in the repression of demonstrations by civilians during Libya's uprising, Saadi Al Qathafi is also subject to a United Nations travel ban and assets freeze," it added.
Niger has confirmed it has a total of 32 Al Qathafi loyalists on its soil, including three generals, saying it allowed them entry for "humanitarian reasons."
Libya's western neighbour Algeria has also given refuge to Al Qathafi family members, announcing on August 31 that it had admitted his daughter Ayesha, her brothers Hannibal and Mohammed and their mother Safiya, again citing "strictly humanitarian reasons."
The whereabouts of the former strongman himself remain a mystery, although he has issued repeated statements vowing to die a martyr rather than flee his homeland.
Libya's new leaders suspect that two of his sons - Muatassim and Seif al-Islam - are still inside Libya, the former in Sirte and the latter in his loyalists' other significant remaining bastion, the desert city of Bani Walid.
Along with his father and former intelligence chief Abdullah al-Senussi, Seif al-Islam is wanted by the International Criminal Court on charges of crimes against humanity.
On the ground in Sirte, meanwhile, anti-Al Qathafi fighters returned to the fray after being forced to retreat during ferocious fighting late on Wednesday.
NTC fighters control the city's port and airport but an AFP correspondent reported intense artillery and heavy machinegun exchanges on Thursday both around the port and the Mahari Hotel.
"It is not going to be easy to capture Sirte," one field commander acknowledged.
"We thought we would be inside Sirte this Friday, but now I think it will not happen," he told AFP, asking not to be identified.
Morgan Strong
Contributing Editor, New York |
