The Star Online: World Updates
The Star Online: World Updates |
- Fighters head towards showdown with pro-Gaddafi town
- FEATURE - Hints of high life sprout in poverty-stricken Gaza
- Gaddafi defiant in call Syria TV says is from Libya
| Fighters head towards showdown with pro-Gaddafi town Posted: 07 Sep 2011 08:58 PM PDT WISHTATA, Libya (Reuters) - - Libya's new rulers sent a column of extra fighters towards the tribal bastion of Bani Walid overnight, preparing a showdown with supporters of ousted leader Muammar Gaddafi, possibly including his sons or even Gaddafi himself.
Gaddafi, in a call to a Syrian-owned TV station on Thursday, vowed continued resistance to the rebels and NATO and said a military convoy that entered neighbouring Niger this week, fueling speculation he might be about to flee, was "not the first". "Columns of convoys drive into and out of Niger carrying goods and people inside and outside (of Libya) say Gaddafi is going to Niger," he said in the call that Arrai TV reported was made from within Libya. "This is not the first time that convoys drive in and out of Niger." Gaddafi's whereabouts have been a mystery since rebel fighters stormed his Tripoli headquarters two weeks ago. Bani Walid, one of the few towns still in the hands of his followers, has refused to surrender despite a stand-off lasting days. Officials from the interim ruling National Transitional Council said they had sent reinforcements after reports that Gaddafi had issued a call for the town to fight. Reuters reporters saw a convoy of NTC forces pickup trucks heading towards Bani Walid with dozens of fighters clutching RPGs and shouting anti-Gaddafi slogans. "We will move into Bani Walid slowly. There was a message in Bani Walid from Gaddafi this evening," NTC unit commander Jamal Gourji said. "He was rallying his troops and calling on people to fight. He is hiding in a hole in the ground, like Iraq," he said, in a reference to late Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, captured hiding in a hole nine months after he was toppled in 2003. Outside the town on Wednesday residents leaving through a sun-scorched NTC checkpoint at the nearby settlement of Wishtata painted an increasingly desperate picture. "People are terrorised," said Salah Ali, 39. "But many still support Gaddafi because they were paid by the regime, because many have committed crimes and are afraid of arrest." Aid agencies have raised concerns about humanitarian conditions there and in the few other cities still under control of Gaddafi loyalists. Communications with them have been cut. The NTC has sent envoys to neighbouring Niger to try to stop Gaddafi and his entourage evading justice by fleeing across a desert frontier toward friendly African states. A convoy arrived in Niger this week, but Niger says Gaddafi was not in it. "We're asking every country not to accept him. We want these people for justice," Fathi Baja, the head of political affairs for the National Transitional Council (NTC), told Reuters in Benghazi, saying the ousted leader may be close to the Niger or Algerian borders, waiting for an opportunity to slip across. "He's looking for a chance to leave," Baja said. Another senior NTC official said Gaddafi was tracked this week to an area in the empty Sahara of Libya's south. But NTC officials near Bani Walid in the north said they believed two of Gaddafi's sons and possibly the leader himself were inside the town. "That would explain why Bani Walid is resisting," NTC negotiator Abdallah Kanshil said of reports of Gaddafi's presence in the town. "His two sons are definitely there." WHERE IS GADDAFI? The Pentagon said it knew nothing to indicate the fallen leader had left Libya. Niger, which took in his security chief this week, insisted Gaddafi had not crossed its border. Washington said it had also contacted the governments of Niger, Mali, Mauritania, Chad and Burkina Faso -- a swathe of poor former French colonies which benefited from Gaddafi's oil-fueled largesse in Africa. The State Department urged them to secure their borders and to detain and disarm Gaddafi officials. Gaddafi and his son Saif al-Islam are wanted for crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court in The Hague. British Foreign Secretary William Hague said any country where he was found should hand him over to be tried, remarks that were echoed by U.S. ambassador to Libya Gene Cretz. With his overthrow, however, have come revelations of the extent to which U.S. and British officials were until recently cooperating with Gaddafi -- once a pariah in the West but rehabilitated by Washington and London in the past decade. Papers found by Reuters in Tripoli showed a British arm of U.S.-based General Dynamics The firm said the military vehicles might have been part of a $135 million 2008 contract, part of what it termed at the time "the United Kingdom's initiatives to improve economic, educational and defence links with Libya". Peter Bouckaert of Human Rights Watch said: "The lesson is that if you are going to sell weapons to dictators, at some point down the line you're going to be deeply embarrassed." In al-Qalaa, a town about 120 km southwest of Tripoli, thousands of people gathered to bury the bodies of 35 people they said were discovered nearby, their corpses packed into a shipping container. "There are still many crimes and graves, and we will discover them," said Moqtar Fernanah, head of the military council for the western region, speaking at the funeral. "Our answer will be to capture these criminals and turn them to the courts for fair trials. They will be punished in accordance to the crimes they committed." (Reporting by Mohammed Abbas, Christian Lowe and Alex Dziadosz in Tripoli, Sherine El Madany in Ras Lanuf, Maria Golovnina in Wishtata, Abdelaziz Boumzar in al-Qalaa, Barry Malone, Sylvia Westall and Alastair Macdonald in Tunis, Sami Aboudi, Amena Bakr and Omar Fahmy in Cairo, Nathalie Prevost and Bate Felix in Niamey, David Brunnstrom in Brussels, Mathieu Bonkoungou in Ouagadougou, Richard Valdmanis and Mark John in Dakar, and Ahmed Tolba in Cairo; Writing by Alastair Macdonald; Editing by Peter Graff and Michael Roddy) Copyright © 2011 Reuters | ||
| FEATURE - Hints of high life sprout in poverty-stricken Gaza Posted: 07 Sep 2011 08:27 PM PDT GAZA (Reuters) - Amidst the poverty and deprivation of the Gaza Strip, a few small signs of prosperity have started to emerge, giving violence-weary locals a taste of comfort that is taken for granted in much the rest of the world. A smart hotel which aspires to five-star service, a shopping outlet that boasts Gaza's first in-store escalator and a sparkling supermarket stocked to the rafters have all opened their doors this summer in the Palestinian enclave. Their appearance does not mean that wealth and well-being are spreading in the tiny territory, because they are not. But they indicate a fresh willingness by outsiders to invest in Gaza and eye future potential. "I have heard about this from my friends and today is my first visit. It is amazing," said Ali Mohammed, 45, a telephone technician who had come to buy chocolates at the central Al-Andalusia store, which is spread out over three floors. "It is as if we were not in Gaza. The blockade is everywhere to be seen out there, but not in here." Israel has imposed a strict blockade on Gaza in response to repeated rocket attacks from Islamist militants over the past six years. However, some of the restrictions have eased over the last 12 months, allowing Al-Andalusia to come to life. A group of Palestinian businessmen, many educated abroad, have hooked up with foreign investors to put $4 million into the enterprise, using their contacts to help fill the shop with merchandise from around the Middle East. Some is imported legitimately through Israel, other goods come via the smuggling tunnels that link Gaza to Egypt, giving shoppers an unusual amount of choice all under one roof. FOR THE ELITE "We originally wanted to build a proper shopping mall, but we started with this as a test," said general manager Ihab Al Esawi, who expects to recoup the original investment within 3 years, so long as war with Israel does not spoil their plans. "You have to have faith," he said with a smile. Up to 2,000 people a day visit the store, including many young children who endlessly ride the spanking new escalator -- only the second moving staircase to be installed in the enclave and the first to be put in a shop that is open to everyone. "This is so exciting," said 10-year-old Bilal Haboush, clutching onto the handrail, his eyes wide open with joy as if he were riding the latest roller coaster at Disney World. Elevated prices in Al-Andalusia and the nearby Metromarket, a supermarket that would not look out of place in a wealthy Gulf state, mean that only the Gaza elite can shop there regularly. The U.N. Palestinian refugee agency, UNWRA, says that some 1.2 million of Gaza's 1.5 million inhabitants are registered as refugees, with unemployment running at around 45 percent -- one of the highest rates in the world. "The combination of persistently high unemployment and the continuing deterioration of the real wages of working people underlie significant levels of poverty," UNWRA said in a report published in June. But small pockets of wealth do still exist, and the Islamist group Hamas, which has a firm grip on power in Gaza, looks increasingly interested in seeing local businesses flourish as a way of diversifying their revenue streams and creating jobs. It is hard to gauge Hamas' involvement in the private entities that have emerged over the past year, but they surely could not operate without prior approval, and if nothing else, they provide the cash-strapped group with badly needed taxes. "Hamas is shifting from being just a military movement and a charity, towards ... looking to make money," said Omar Shaban, the head of the Gaza-based Pal-Think think-tank. "Even Hamas now understands what it means to have a good life, that it is not all about Jihad and martyrdom. They are starting to go to hotel terraces with their families. It is a good thing. They feel they have something to lose," he added. HOTEL OASIS, OR MIRAGE? One of the more remarkable hotel terraces in the whole Middle East opened earlier this year in the northern corner of the Gaza Strip, close to a Hamas military training base and one of the territory's largest refugee camps. Originally conceived as offices when building started in the 1990s, the designs later morphed into a 220-bedroom hotel which was due to be operated by the luxury Movenpick chain. But they pulled out before a guest had even moved in after Hamas took control of Gaza in 2007 following a brief civil war. A subsequent tightening of the Israeli blockade, not to mention repeated clashes between the two sides, left the project on ice. The dust-sheets were finally removed this year, with Spanish group ArcMed agreeing to run the newly named Al Mashtal, sending in a couple of experienced managers to train the 70 local hires. Tourism is not an option in a territory where access to outsiders is tightly limited, but a handful of international aid workers plus the occasional wealthy Palestinian expatriate visiting family have stayed the night, while the restaurants and pool-side cafes see much more activity from well-heeled locals. The pool itself is off limits for communal bathing because of local rules banning men and women from swimming together. But without a radical change in the regional picture and a dramatic change in relations between Israel and the Gazans, it is hard to imagine the hotel's local client base widening. "The middle class here is shrinking. People are falling into poverty or else just fleeing," said Gazan economist Shaban. Standing like an oasis on the scruffy seafront strip, it is clear Al Mashral cannot escape the reality of life in Gaza. Just two weeks ago an Israeli missile strike killed two Islamist gunmen riding a motorcycle some 500 metres from the hotel. So is it a triumph of hope over adversity? "Only time can answer this question," says the somewhat terse Spanish manager, Rafel Carpinell. (Additional reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi; Editing by Sonya Hepinstall) Copyright © 2011 Reuters | ||
| Gaddafi defiant in call Syria TV says is from Libya Posted: 07 Sep 2011 08:27 PM PDT CAIRO (Reuters) - Former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, in a phone call a Syrian television station said was made from inside Libya, vowed on Thursday to defeat rebels who control most of the country. He also said a Libyan military convoy that arrived in neighbouring Niger was "not the first", and gave no hint this might be a step towards him and his followers fleeing Libya.
Gaddafi, whose whereabouts are unknown, instead said in the brief live speech carried by Arrai TV that his forces would rally to defeat the rebels and NATO, which has attacked his military through air strikes. "The youths are now ready to escalate the resistance against the 'rats' (rebels) in Tripoli and to finish off the mercenaries," Gaddafi said during the call, which the television station said was being made from within Libya. "We will defeat NATO...and NATO is rejected by the Libyan people," he said. Gaddafi said the Libyan military convoy, which French and Niger military sources said showed up in the northern Niger city of Agadez this week, was nothing exceptional. "Columns of convoys drive into and out of Niger carrying goods and people inside and outside (of Libya) say Gaddafi is going to Niger," he said. "This is not the first time that convoys drive in and out of Niger." Gaddafi's spokesman has repeatedly said he is in Libya and remains in high spirits. Niger said he was not in the convoy. Libya's ruling National Transitional Council (NTC) has sent envoys to Niger to try to stop Gaddafi and his entourage from evading justice by fleeing across a desert frontier toward friendly African states. (Reporting by Joseph Nasr and Ahmed Tolba; Writing by Michael Roddy; Editing by Yoko Nishikawa) Copyright © 2011 Reuters |
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