MORE on the civil war in Libya from the Washington Post. After reading these reports and others from NPR and other media it is a reminder for Americans that we can not take our freedom for granted, and that democracy is not a spectator sport....
By Leila Fadel
Washington Post Staff Writer
BAIDA, LIBYA - The young men of this idyllic town nestled in the Green Mountain region of eastern Libya took control here in a days-long battle. First they fought their way into a security camp protected by 2,000 mercenaries and other forces loyal to the government of Moammar Gaddafi. Then they took over the streets.
When Awad Mohammed's five sons joined the battle, he stood on the sidelines with his wife. He felt fear and pride.
"They had nothing - just sticks, stones and bare chests. They took the guns from the mercenaries and used them against them," said Mohammed, an Arabic literature professor. "We never imagined the young people could do this. . . . I will die for them. These are all my sons."
Now these sons of Baida - some just 13 and armed with rifles, rocket-propelled grenades and knives - man the lawless roads as they brace for the next possible attack. They are keenly aware that their leader of 41 years has shown no qualms about killing his own people.
Throughout Wednesday, opposition activists stayed in touch with one another through weak cellphone connections, gathering news of defectors, attacks in the distant capital and rumors that Gaddafi would send planes here to bomb the town.
The scenic wonder of Baida - with its pure blue sky and lush mountains - belies the strength of its residents, who are threatening to help put an abrupt end to Gaddafi's reign through a nationwide uprising that has already claimed much of the country's eastern half. Within just over a week, the government has gone from total control here to none. But Baida's liberation came at a steep price.
At least 90 civilians have been killed in the 10-mile stretch from Baida to the town of Shahat, according to doctors and witnesses. In just one neighborhood, there have been 17 funerals, including one Wednesday.
Now, everyone is armed. The police stations and other government buildings have been burned, and pictures of Gaddafi lie shredded along the roads.
Outside the local parliament building in Baida, once controlled by Gaddafi's revolutionary committee, men and women demonstrated Wednesday, chanting "Free! Free! Libya!" Others replaced Gaddafi's green flag with the red, black and green flag that predates his rise to power.
Inside the building, community leaders met to plan for the future of an area that has no government and could easily descend into chaos. The leaders formed four committees: street cleaning, security, food supplies and medical services.
Mustafa Abdel Jalil was among those who had gathered here. Only three days ago, he was Gaddafi's justice minister. He resigned Sunday to protest the "coldblooded" killings of civilians by "tanks, bombs, bullets and mercenaries," he said.
Jalil said the area's residents were prepared to defend themselves.
The government has threatened to cut off water, electricity and food supplies to starve residents out. State television has declared, falsely, that the area is now an Islamic state, in an effort to demonize the popular revolt.
"The fundamental thing that we're committed to today is to prepare for the embargo," Jalil said. "We are going to fight, and if we have to, we'll fast for a few days and depend on our neighbors."
Jalil also said he was concerned, not least about the uncontrolled distribution of weapons in a place where teenage boys have begun driving tanks in the streets.
"Our strategy is to collect the arms and use them for good and keep national unity," he said as men gathered around to thank him for resigning and to give him flowers.
While it is tense, there are no signs of infighting here. Everyone is armed, but the people are united by their contempt for Gaddafi.
Just days ago, the picture was far different, with bloody battles in the streets. On Wednesday, spent ammunition from rifles and antiaircraft weapons littered the streets. Fresh blood stained the ground.
Residents said mercenaries flown in from other parts of Africa had gone on a killing rampage.
The town's young men reacted with grief, and with rage.
One man took a tractor and broke down the walls of the Kitab security base in Shahat, where mercenaries were housed, witnesses and participants said. In a battle that lasted a day and a half, the residents overwhelmed the forces, killing some and taking others hostage. The captives are being held in secret locations throughout the area.
At the local airport, residents have blocked the runways with large rocks, car parts and other debris to keep the government from flying in reinforcements.
This area has a history of resistance to unwanted rulers. Every child knows the name of Omar Mukhtar, a fighter who battled Libya's colonial masters, the Italians. An uprising in the 1990s was violently quelled by Gaddafi.
On Wednesday, the young men celebrated their victory in a local square, with a portrait of Mukhtar hanging overhead.
Before the uprising began, it was common for people to disappear for speaking even one word against Gaddafi or his government, residents said.
"The only place you opened your mouth was at the dentist," said Abdul Hamid Gebril, a law professor.
A teacher whose cousin disappeared in 2003 said the fate of those who vanish is widely understood.
"Anyone who enters the prisons of Moammar, we know after a few years that person is killed," she said while speaking inside her home, too afraid to allow her name to be printed. "Even we don't know where they're buried. You say something and the next day the intelligence comes and that's it. You never hear from them again."
The uprising must continue, she said, but it will be bloodier than the ones that succeeded in neighboring Tunisia and Egypt.
"In Egypt, people sat in the square with children, fathers and mothers and slept, and they sang and danced. I saw them on television," she said. "Here our streets are bloody, and our youths are killed."
Gaddafi's son denies crackdown; loyalists reportedly continue attacks
By Leila Fadel, Ernesto Londono and Debbi Wilgoren
Washington Post Foreign Service
BAIDA, LIBYA - Moammar Gaddafi's son denied Thursday that Libya has killed large numbers of protesters through airstrikes and other attacks, while a former top Gaddafi aide said he quit the government to protest its violent crackdown.
Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, Gaddafi's son, disputed the death tolls that have have been reported since the protests began 10 days ago, saying allegations that hundreds have been killed are a "joke."
"Tripoli is quiet," he said in an interview aired on Libyan state television. "Life is normal."
The junior Gaddafi said Libya intends to provide Western journalists on Friday access to Tripoli, the capital, and other cities, so they can corroborate the government's claim that the country remains under Gaddafi's control.
The U.S. State Department issued a warning to Western journalists who have entered Libya in recent days without government permission. Citing information received from top Libyan officials, the warning said some members of CNN, BBC Arabic and al-Arabiya would be allowed into the country, but any reporters not approved by the government as part of that effort would be considered al-Qaeda "collaborators."
"The Libyan government said that it was not responsible for the safety of these journalists, who risked immediate arrest on the full range of possible immigration charges," the State Department warning said.
Libya appears dangerously fractured, with Gaddafi's regime intent on fighting but its authority beyond Tripoli in doubt. The longtime ruler has tightened his grip on the capital, witnesses say, by flooding the streets with militiamen and loyalist troops who were reportedly roaming the streets and shooting opponents from SUVs.
Rebels who launched an uprising last week have consolidated their control of key eastern cities, however, and continued advancing west across the coastal strip, where most of the country's population is clustered. The opposition has called for a large protest Friday.
In the city of Zawiya, 30 miles west of Tripoli, an army unit attacked a mosque where protesters had been stationed for several days, a witness told the Associated Press. The soldiers opened fire with automatic weapons and hit the mosque's minaret with anti-aircraft missiles, the witness, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said.
He told the AP there were casualties, but couldn't provide exact figures. Some of the young men among the protesters had hunting rifles, he said. He said a day earlier an envoy from Gaddafi had come to the city and warned protesters, "Either leave or you will see a massacre."
"What is happening is horrible, those who attacked us are not the mercenaries; they are sons of our country," the witness said, sobbing. After the assault, thousands massed in the city's main Martyrs Square, shouting "leave, leave," in reference to Gaddafi, he said.
The other attack came at a small airport outside Misrata, Libya's third-largest city, where rebels claimed control on Wednesday, AP reported. Militiamen on Thursday attacked a line of residents who were protecting the facility, opening fire with rocket-propelled grenades and mortars, said a resident who saw the assault
"They left piles of human remains and swamp of blood," the resident told the Associated Press. "The hospitals are packed with those killed and injured."
In Cairo, a cousin and close adviser to Gaddafi said he had defected from the regime to protest its crackdown on the uprising, the Associated Press reported. Gadhaf al-Dam, who arrived in Egypt several days ago, is a member of the Libyan leader's inner circle, handling Libyan-Egyptian relations.
Dam said in a statement that the crackdown has seen "grave violations to human rights and human and international laws," AP reported. He said he left Libya "in protest and to show disagreement."
Oil prices hit $100 a barrel because of the turmoil in the North African oil exporter, a peak not reached since 2008. In Washington and other capitals, attention turned to the possible responses to the crackdown, including economic sanctions or imposition of a no-flight zone over Libya to prevent the use of aircraft against civilians.
In Washington, President Obama said the United States was developing a "full range of options" and would intensify discussions with other nations to address the violent unraveling of Gaddafi's regime.
"The suffering and bloodshed are outrageous and unacceptable," Obama said. The Libyan government "must be held accountable for its failure . . . and face the cost of continued violations of human rights."
But enormous questions remained about whether any foreign powers could wield the influence necessary to head off Libya's dizzying plunge into disorder, much less persuade Gaddafi to reconsider his vow to fight to the death in defense of his 41-year-old regime.
The independent organization Human Rights Watch has estimated that 300 people have been killed in a week of clashes, although some Libyan opposition groups and Western diplomats have said that they fear the figure may be much larger.
A 600-passenger ferry chartered by the U.S. government was in Libya to evacuate U.S. citizens to the nearby island of Malta, but its departure has been delayed by turbulent weather.
Residents reached by telephone in Tripoli on Wednesday said Gaddafi's loyalists appeared to have reclaimed control of the capital after several days of skirmishes. Stores and offices were shut down, the residents said, while blue-uniformed militiamen set up checkpoints and regime loyalists cleaned up graffiti calling for him to step down.
But opposition groups appeared to have taken control of cities across a broad swath of northern Libya that stretched hundreds of miles from Tobruk, near the Egyptian border, to as far as Misurata, 120 miles east of the capital. The loosely organized opposition protected key roads and government installations, with men in fluorescent orange vests patrolling the area, armed with sticks or rocket-propelled grenades.
A state-run radio station previously known as Eastern Radio was under the control of opposition groups, which renamed it Free Radio. In and around Baida, along the northern coast west of Tobruk, the once-omnipresent portraits of Gaddafi had been ripped down or burned.
"Oh Moammar, dictator, it's your turn now," people chanted.
There was ample evidence of recent fighting in Baida. Buildings on Revolution Street were pocked with bullet holes. At La Braq Airport, spent ammunition from rifles and antiaircraft rounds littered the ground. Civilians and defected soldiers climbed on tanks and blocked the runways to stop planes from landing - a precaution, residents said, after people were gunned down last week by purported mercenaries flown in from elsewhere in Africa.
The ability of the rebels to swiftly push west suggested that Libya's powerful tribes, long a beneficiary of Gaddafi's patronage, were turning against him. In recent days, tribal leaders have declared their support for the opposition after Gaddafi's use of warplanes and helicopter gunships to kill hundreds of protesters.
Indeed, the eastern tribes have long complained of being denied a share of Libya's wealth and resources, and eastern cities such as Benghazi have been bastions of opposition. Such grievances led to a revolt in the 1990s and underpinned the ongoing rebellion that began in Benghazi last week, in a country of as many as 140 tribes.
The east's al-Zuwayya tribe threatened to shut down oil production unless authorities stopped the "oppression of the protesters." The Warfala, one of the country's biggest and most influential tribes, has also reportedly joined the opposition. The tribe controls areas around Tripoli.
"We are seeing more and more tribal defections. A lot of police and military in Tobruk, Benghazi and other eastern cities defected because their tribal leaders had ordered them," Ronald Bruce St. John, an author and expert on Libya, said in a telephone interview. "I think you will see more and more in western Libya."
So far, St. John said, it appears that the major tribes in and around Tripoli continue to support Gaddafi.
The signs of a widening rebellion in eastern Libya came as more senior military commanders and government officials defected. The Libyan newspaper Quryna reported that an air force pilot bailed out of his Soviet-made warplane and allowed it to crash rather than following an order to bomb Benghazi.
Residents of Tripoli said a sense of fear pervaded the capital.
"We have been indoors for the past three days," said Rahma, a Libyan American reached by telephone, who insisted that her last name not be used to avoid any retribution. "Tripoli is like a ghost town, as if nobody exists here."
She said her father, also a U.S. citizen, had been detained during an anti-government demonstration a few days ago in front of Tripoli's courthouse and was being held at a hospital on a military base. She said she fears for his safety after listening to Gaddafi's speech, in which he threatened to execute anyone going against the regime.
"We don't know what's going to happen to him," Rahma said.
She said two sons of a neighbor were killed at a protest. The next day, Rahma said, the neighbor placed a green Libyan national flag by her house to show support for Gaddafi and avoid being targeted by his loyalists.
fadell@washpost.com londonoe@washpost.com
Londono reported from Cairo. Wilgoren reported from Washington. Correspondent Sudarsan Raghavan contributed reporting from Sanaa, Yemen. Staff writer Howard Schneider in Washington contributed to this report.
BUCKNACKT'S SORDID TAWDRY BLOG We should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive & well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, chocolate, bier or wein in hand, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming "WHOO-HOO, WHAT A RIDE!!!!!!"
Showing posts with label Bayda. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bayda. Show all posts
24 February 2011
Fight For Libya Edges Closer To Tripoli And Gadhafi & Provisional Government Forming In Eastern Libya 23 & 24 FEB11
LIBYA'S revolution has become civil war, and will be one of the bloodiest of all the struggles for freedom and democracy across the Arab world, but that is no surprise considering moammar gadhafi's regime has held on to power through brutality and corruption. And be sure to read the 2nd story about the provisional government being established in Bayda. God help the people of Libya.....
As forces loyal to Libyan President Moammar Gadhafi reportedly held on to control of the capital city Tripoli and continued a crackdown on protesters Wednesday, the eastern part of the country was in the hands of the rebels — who are now trying to organize themselves.
In eastern Libya, in the city of Bayda, a provisional government was being formed. The new leadership also is holding some Gadhafi loyalists hostage.
As the first Western journalists many of the residents of Bayda had ever seen were led into the meeting, the crowd gave a standing ovation — quickly followed by cries of "Freedom, Freedom!" and "Libya, Libya!"
This building had been a symbol of Gadhafi's regime — where his revolutionary council would meet to discuss local affairs.
A new revolution was finding its voice in Bayda, and its fighters were vowing to end Gadhafi's reign. Some people were crying, others pumping their fists in the air.
"Ordinary people, doctors, lawyers are talking about how we can coordinate with all other cities in Libya who are now under the protesters' control," says Ahmed Jibril, a former diplomat at the Libyan mission at the United Nations.
He says this is the beginning of a new government.
"We have a former minister of justice who just resigned three or four days ago," Jibril says. "He's among us and people agreed ... he would be one of the people in control."
In eastern Libya, it's still chaotic. On the streets, heavily armed and masked young men man checkpoints. There are tanks and anti-aircraft guns that have been looted from military bases positioned around towns and cities — and they are all in the hands of the rebel forces.
Jibril says that eastern Libya will defend itself, but they want a united country. "We will not divide Libya. We will not accept a division of Libya," he says.
Libya is a country of huge oil wealth, but also great poverty. Abdullah Mortady, an architect who hasn't built anything for 15 years, says the people here want to use Libya's riches for the people, not just for the enrichment of one family.
"We want to build our country," he says. "Infrastructure is nothing. Building is nothing. Our morality is completely destroyed. Today I can't speak because for 42 years we didn't speak, even our voice completely disappeared."
The new leadership is asserting itself. An elementary school has been converted into a prison, where around 100 pro-Gadhafi fighters are being kept in detention. They are what remains of a group of fighters who had holed up at a nearby airport and then were forced to surrender after a bloody battle that left a dozen people dead on Tuesday.
Many of the men are wounded, but they've been given blankets and medical attention. They are clearly scared. Most of the men say they are Libyans from the south. Among them are four men from Chad who look weak and malnourished. They declined to talk.
There have been rumors of foreign mercenaries being shipped in by the planeload to fight for Gadhafi in the east, but there is scant evidence of them here.
A Libyan soldier in detention, Ismael Salem Abu Salah, acknowledges that he was sent in to quell the initial unrest. He says he was fired upon first by the pro-democracy forces and that is why the troops fired back.
He adds that he's been treated well since he's been in detention.
The fate of these men is unclear. There is no court to try them and many in the city have been calling for their execution, especially among the younger men.
The older generation, which is now trying to form a government, is ensuring they are protected.
"The leaders, the wise people ... they had a meeting and they said they should stop these youth from, you know, from revenge, you know, because some of the youth have two or three brothers killed from the same family," says Dr. Masoud Abdullah, a professor of management science. "I was there in that meeting. It all comes down to the older generation who stopped the youth from taking revenge and ... killing them."
But he adds that they haven't been released yet because "the uprising hasn't finished. We don't know what will happen to this area. They might stop electricity; they might stop sending gas here, milk, food. We don't know."
They will use them as a way to negotiate with the regime, he says, if it should come to that.
http://www.npr.org/2011/02/23/134003954/New-Government-Forms-In-Eastern-Libya
As Moammar Gadhafi's grip on swaths of Libya faltered, army units and militiamen launched a swift and reportedly brutal counterattack Thursday against protesters who have risen up in cities close to the capital.
In Zawiya, some 30 miles west of Tripoli, an army unit attacked the city's Souq mosque, where regime opponents had been camped for days in a protest calling for Gadhafi's ouster, a witness said. The soldiers opened fire with automatic weapons and hit the mosque's minaret with fire from an anti-aircraft gun, he said. Some of the young men among the protesters, who were inside the mosque and in a nearby lot, had hunting rifles for protection.
A doctor at a field clinic set up at the mosque said he saw the bodies of 10 dead, shot in the head and chest, as well as around 150 wounded.
The witness said an envoy from Gadhafi had come to Zawiya a day earlier and warned protesters: "Either leave or you will see a massacre."
"What is happening is horrible. Those who attacked us are not the mercenaries — they are sons of our country," he said, sobbing. After the assault, thousands massed in the city's main Martyrs Square, shouting, "Leave, leave!" in reference to Gadhafi, he said.
In a speech carried on Al-Jazeera, a voice purported to be Gadhafi's chastised the people of Zawiya, telling them to "control your children." He blamed the revolt on al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden and said the uprising has been carried out by young men hopped up on al-Qaida-supplied hallucinogenic pills given to them "in their coffee with milk, like Nescafe."
Libya's leader claimed that "no one above the age of 20" was participating in the unrest and that young men get "trigger-happy and shoot, especially when they get stoned on drugs."
Outside Misrata, Libya's third-largest city, militiamen reportedly attacked a line of residents who were protecting a small airport, opening fire with rocket-propelled grenades and mortars.
"They left piles of human remains and [a] swamp of blood," according to a resident who said he witnessed the assault. "The hospitals are packed with those killed and injured." But he could not provide exact figures.
Independent estimates of the number of people killed range from 233 to as many as 1,000. Seif al-Islam Gadhafi, Moammar Gadhafi's son, said that such reports are exaggerated, although he didn't provide his own figures.
During a news conference Thursday aired on state TV, the younger Gadhafi said the number killed by police and the army had been limited and "talking about hundreds and thousands [killed] is a joke."
In Benghazi, the scene of a bloody battle that ended just days ago, NPR's Lourdes Garcia-Navarro reported that hundreds of people have converged on an army base where they believe secret prisons run by the regime may have existed.
"They say they are shocked by what they found," she said. "In one case, they found an underground prison where 50 people were being held, and they are now digging frantically looking for mass graves."
A senior Libyan army commander who defected to the side of anti-government protesters said Thursday that his soldiers were training volunteers to join the fight to topple Gadhafi.
Maj. Gen. Soliman Mahmoud Al-Obeidy, who commands army units based in the eastern city of Tobruk, allied with rebel forces Wednesday. He told NPR that fresh volunteers were coming in every day.
"They are using some of the army officers that defected here in the east," Garcia-Navarro said. "They are training them on heavy weapons and army tactics to go help protesters in the west of the country who are still under the control of Moammar Gadhafi."
Exodus By Land, Sea, Air Continues
Even as the rebellion moves closer to Gadhafi's bastion in the capital, home to a third of Libya's 6 million people, thousands of people were struggling to leave Libya by land, sea and air.
NPR's Tom Gjelten reported that Tunisians who worked in Libya were streaming back across the border. At one checkpoint, Tunisians "enthusiatically cheered as they crossed the border denouncing Gadhafi."
Two ships braved churning seas Thursday to whisk 4,500 Chinese workers away from Libya to the island of Crete, while rough weather farther west left hundreds of Americans stranded on a ferry in Tripoli.
Americans who eagerly climbed aboard the Maria Dolores ferry at Tripoli's As-shahab Port on Wednesday faced a long delay in their travel plans. Strong winds have been whipping up high waves in the Mediterranean Sea, and the 600-passenger catamaran ferry was not likely to leave for the eight-hour journey to Malta until Friday.
"The ferry will depart when the weather improves. At the moment, we're anticipating this will happen by tomorrow morning, but we're waiting for an updated weather report," said Elijah Waterman of the U.S. Embassy in Malta.
People who managed to flee Tripoli by air described sheer chaos at the airport, with people shoving and climbing over each other to get on planes. Amateur video showed crowds of people jammed shoulder to shoulder, some appearing to be camped out.
"The airport is just a zoo. There's about 10,000 people there, all trying to get out," Ewan Black of Britain told the BBC as he got off a flight at London's Gatwick Airport.
Those who made it out of Libya described a frightening scene, with bodies hanging from electricity poles in Libya's eastern port of Benghazi and militia trucks driving around loaded up with dead bodies. One video showed a tank apparently crushing a car with people inside.
Europe Prepares Sanctions Against Libya
International momentum has been building for action to punish Gadhafi's regime for the bloodshed.
President Obama said the suffering in Libya "is outrageous and it is unacceptable," and he directed his administration to prepare a full range of options, including possible sanctions that could freeze the assets and ban travel to the U.S. by Libyan officials.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy raised the possibility of the European Union's cutting off economic ties.
The European Union said Thursday that it is preparing sanctions against Libya. Some EU governments have had a close relationship with Gadhafi, but all 27 united in a threat of sanctions against him if mass violations of human rights continue.
"I have seen horrible crimes that are unacceptable and must not remain without consequences," European Union President Herman van Rompuy said.
The U.N. high commissioner for human rights, Navi Pillay, said she wants Gadhafi's regime investigated for war crimes before the International Criminal Court in The Hague.
With reporting from NPR's Lourdes Garcia-Navarro in Benghazi and Tom Gjelten on the Libya-Tunisia border. This story contains material from The Associated Press.
In Zawiya, some 30 miles west of Tripoli, an army unit attacked the city's Souq mosque, where regime opponents had been camped for days in a protest calling for Gadhafi's ouster, a witness said. The soldiers opened fire with automatic weapons and hit the mosque's minaret with fire from an anti-aircraft gun, he said. Some of the young men among the protesters, who were inside the mosque and in a nearby lot, had hunting rifles for protection.
AFP/Getty Images
A protester holds an old national flag in front of a wall covered with graffiti against Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi in the eastern city of Tobruk on Thursday.
The witness said an envoy from Gadhafi had come to Zawiya a day earlier and warned protesters: "Either leave or you will see a massacre."
"What is happening is horrible. Those who attacked us are not the mercenaries — they are sons of our country," he said, sobbing. After the assault, thousands massed in the city's main Martyrs Square, shouting, "Leave, leave!" in reference to Gadhafi, he said.
In a speech carried on Al-Jazeera, a voice purported to be Gadhafi's chastised the people of Zawiya, telling them to "control your children." He blamed the revolt on al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden and said the uprising has been carried out by young men hopped up on al-Qaida-supplied hallucinogenic pills given to them "in their coffee with milk, like Nescafe."
Libya's leader claimed that "no one above the age of 20" was participating in the unrest and that young men get "trigger-happy and shoot, especially when they get stoned on drugs."
Related NPR Stories
Provisional Government Forming In Eastern Libya
In Bayda, the rebels are in control and trying to organize themselves. Libyans Flee As Gadhafi's Hold Over Country Weakens
Anti-government protesters claimed control of many cities, but Tripoli remained with Gadhafi. Nearby Uprisings Stoke Saudis' Political Passions
More than ever before, Saudis are demanding political reform.
"They left piles of human remains and [a] swamp of blood," according to a resident who said he witnessed the assault. "The hospitals are packed with those killed and injured." But he could not provide exact figures.
Independent estimates of the number of people killed range from 233 to as many as 1,000. Seif al-Islam Gadhafi, Moammar Gadhafi's son, said that such reports are exaggerated, although he didn't provide his own figures.
During a news conference Thursday aired on state TV, the younger Gadhafi said the number killed by police and the army had been limited and "talking about hundreds and thousands [killed] is a joke."
In Benghazi, the scene of a bloody battle that ended just days ago, NPR's Lourdes Garcia-Navarro reported that hundreds of people have converged on an army base where they believe secret prisons run by the regime may have existed.
"They say they are shocked by what they found," she said. "In one case, they found an underground prison where 50 people were being held, and they are now digging frantically looking for mass graves."
A senior Libyan army commander who defected to the side of anti-government protesters said Thursday that his soldiers were training volunteers to join the fight to topple Gadhafi.
Maj. Gen. Soliman Mahmoud Al-Obeidy, who commands army units based in the eastern city of Tobruk, allied with rebel forces Wednesday. He told NPR that fresh volunteers were coming in every day.
The Arab World
Exodus By Land, Sea, Air Continues
Even as the rebellion moves closer to Gadhafi's bastion in the capital, home to a third of Libya's 6 million people, thousands of people were struggling to leave Libya by land, sea and air.
NPR's Tom Gjelten reported that Tunisians who worked in Libya were streaming back across the border. At one checkpoint, Tunisians "enthusiatically cheered as they crossed the border denouncing Gadhafi."
Two ships braved churning seas Thursday to whisk 4,500 Chinese workers away from Libya to the island of Crete, while rough weather farther west left hundreds of Americans stranded on a ferry in Tripoli.
Americans who eagerly climbed aboard the Maria Dolores ferry at Tripoli's As-shahab Port on Wednesday faced a long delay in their travel plans. Strong winds have been whipping up high waves in the Mediterranean Sea, and the 600-passenger catamaran ferry was not likely to leave for the eight-hour journey to Malta until Friday.
AFP/Getty Images
Libyans shout anti-Gadhafi slogans during a demonstration in the eastern town of Derna, between Tobruk and Benghazi.
People who managed to flee Tripoli by air described sheer chaos at the airport, with people shoving and climbing over each other to get on planes. Amateur video showed crowds of people jammed shoulder to shoulder, some appearing to be camped out.
"The airport is just a zoo. There's about 10,000 people there, all trying to get out," Ewan Black of Britain told the BBC as he got off a flight at London's Gatwick Airport.
Those who made it out of Libya described a frightening scene, with bodies hanging from electricity poles in Libya's eastern port of Benghazi and militia trucks driving around loaded up with dead bodies. One video showed a tank apparently crushing a car with people inside.
Europe Prepares Sanctions Against Libya
International momentum has been building for action to punish Gadhafi's regime for the bloodshed.
President Obama said the suffering in Libya "is outrageous and it is unacceptable," and he directed his administration to prepare a full range of options, including possible sanctions that could freeze the assets and ban travel to the U.S. by Libyan officials.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy raised the possibility of the European Union's cutting off economic ties.
The European Union said Thursday that it is preparing sanctions against Libya. Some EU governments have had a close relationship with Gadhafi, but all 27 united in a threat of sanctions against him if mass violations of human rights continue.
"I have seen horrible crimes that are unacceptable and must not remain without consequences," European Union President Herman van Rompuy said.
The U.N. high commissioner for human rights, Navi Pillay, said she wants Gadhafi's regime investigated for war crimes before the International Criminal Court in The Hague.
With reporting from NPR's Lourdes Garcia-Navarro in Benghazi and Tom Gjelten on the Libya-Tunisia border. This story contains material from The Associated Press.
Provisional Government Forming In Eastern Libya
Listen to the Story
[4 min 50 sec]
Libyan TV/AFP/Getty Images
An image broadcast on Libyan state television on Sunday shows damage caused by fire to the local council building in the eastern city of Bayda. The city is now in the hands of anti-Gadhafi rebels who are forming a provisional government.
In eastern Libya, in the city of Bayda, a provisional government was being formed. The new leadership also is holding some Gadhafi loyalists hostage.
As the first Western journalists many of the residents of Bayda had ever seen were led into the meeting, the crowd gave a standing ovation — quickly followed by cries of "Freedom, Freedom!" and "Libya, Libya!"
This building had been a symbol of Gadhafi's regime — where his revolutionary council would meet to discuss local affairs.
A new revolution was finding its voice in Bayda, and its fighters were vowing to end Gadhafi's reign. Some people were crying, others pumping their fists in the air.
"Ordinary people, doctors, lawyers are talking about how we can coordinate with all other cities in Libya who are now under the protesters' control," says Ahmed Jibril, a former diplomat at the Libyan mission at the United Nations.
He says this is the beginning of a new government.
"We have a former minister of justice who just resigned three or four days ago," Jibril says. "He's among us and people agreed ... he would be one of the people in control."
In eastern Libya, it's still chaotic. On the streets, heavily armed and masked young men man checkpoints. There are tanks and anti-aircraft guns that have been looted from military bases positioned around towns and cities — and they are all in the hands of the rebel forces.
Jibril says that eastern Libya will defend itself, but they want a united country. "We will not divide Libya. We will not accept a division of Libya," he says.
Libya is a country of huge oil wealth, but also great poverty. Abdullah Mortady, an architect who hasn't built anything for 15 years, says the people here want to use Libya's riches for the people, not just for the enrichment of one family.
"We want to build our country," he says. "Infrastructure is nothing. Building is nothing. Our morality is completely destroyed. Today I can't speak because for 42 years we didn't speak, even our voice completely disappeared."
The new leadership is asserting itself. An elementary school has been converted into a prison, where around 100 pro-Gadhafi fighters are being kept in detention. They are what remains of a group of fighters who had holed up at a nearby airport and then were forced to surrender after a bloody battle that left a dozen people dead on Tuesday.
Many of the men are wounded, but they've been given blankets and medical attention. They are clearly scared. Most of the men say they are Libyans from the south. Among them are four men from Chad who look weak and malnourished. They declined to talk.
There have been rumors of foreign mercenaries being shipped in by the planeload to fight for Gadhafi in the east, but there is scant evidence of them here.
A Libyan soldier in detention, Ismael Salem Abu Salah, acknowledges that he was sent in to quell the initial unrest. He says he was fired upon first by the pro-democracy forces and that is why the troops fired back.
He adds that he's been treated well since he's been in detention.
The fate of these men is unclear. There is no court to try them and many in the city have been calling for their execution, especially among the younger men.
The older generation, which is now trying to form a government, is ensuring they are protected.
"The leaders, the wise people ... they had a meeting and they said they should stop these youth from, you know, from revenge, you know, because some of the youth have two or three brothers killed from the same family," says Dr. Masoud Abdullah, a professor of management science. "I was there in that meeting. It all comes down to the older generation who stopped the youth from taking revenge and ... killing them."
But he adds that they haven't been released yet because "the uprising hasn't finished. We don't know what will happen to this area. They might stop electricity; they might stop sending gas here, milk, food. We don't know."
They will use them as a way to negotiate with the regime, he says, if it should come to that.
http://www.npr.org/2011/02/23/134003954/New-Government-Forms-In-Eastern-Libya
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