The Star Online: World Updates
The Star Online: World Updates |
- Saleh to leave hospital, fighting flares in Sanaa
- Libya rebels say they are advancing on Brega
- Quarter-million Israelis march for economic reform
| Saleh to leave hospital, fighting flares in Sanaa Posted: 06 Aug 2011 09:19 PM PDT SANAA (Reuters) - Yemen's president Ali Abdullah Saleh will leave hospital soon, a government source said on Saturday, as clashes between his loyalists and opponents flared in the capital he left when protests against his rule turned into open warfare.
The fate of Saleh, forced to seek treatment in Saudi Arabia for injuries suffered in a bomb attack in his palace in June, has thrown the Arab world's poorest country into a political crisis threatening to tip into civil war. Political deadlock born of six months of protests against Saleh and renewed conflicts with Islamists and separatists have raised fears in neighbouring Saudi Arabia and Washington that chaos in Yemen could embolden the country's Al Qaeda wing. Saleh will leave hospital in the coming days, a Yemeni government source told Reuters. But the wounded leader, who has vowed to return to Yemen, will stay on in Riyadh in Saudi government housing for the time being, the source said. His prime minister, Ali Mohamed Megawar, injured in the same attack, left hospital and moved into official Saudi accommodation earlier on Saturday, the source said. The announcement came as forces loyal to Saleh skirmished with those of the Ahmar family, a power within Yemen's Hashed tribal confederation, in the capital, witnesses said. They said the two sides traded fire in the Hassaba district of the capital, where prominent members of the Ahmar family reside. The exchange marked a second day of confrontation in the area, though there were no reports of casualties. Separately, one protester was killed and three injured in the southern city of Taiz when forces loyal to Saleh opened fire to scatter an anti-Saleh demonstration, witnesses said. Weeks of fighting between Saleh's forces and those of the Ahmar family left parts of Sanaa in ruins, giving way to an uneasy ceasefire after the bombing in Saleh's compound that forced him from the country in June. That attack came after Saleh rejected for the third time a deal crafted by the Gulf Cooperation Council, a grouping of Yemen's resource-rich Gulf neighbours, to ease him from office. The collapse of diplomatic efforts to defuse the crisis over Saleh's fate has coincided with a surge of fighting in the south of the country with Islamists, whom Saleh's government has linked to the country's Al Qaeda branch. Islamist fighters seized Zinjibar, capital of the southern Abyan province, in late May, a development Saleh's opponents accused him of orchestrating to underline his threat that only his rule would keep parts of the country from falling to Al Qaeda. The ensuing fighting in Abyan has displaced as many as 90,000 of the province's residents. Washington, which has made Saleh's Yemen a cornerstone of its counter-terrorism strategy, has urged him to accept the deal to ease him from power, while maintaining ties with potential successors. (Additional reporting by Mohamed Sudam; Writing by Joseph Logan; Editing by Peter Graff) Copyright © 2011 Reuters Full Feed Generated by Get Full RSS, sponsored by Used Car Search. | ||
| Libya rebels say they are advancing on Brega Posted: 06 Aug 2011 09:19 PM PDT BENGHAZI, Libya (Reuters) - Libyan rebels on Saturday said they had launched a push to capture the coastal oil town of Brega, but were advancing slowly because Muammar Gaddafi's forces had sown minefields across its approaches.
"There's a big movement on all fronts around Brega. We are attacking from three sides," said spokesman Mohammad Zawawi. Fighting on the eastern front of the civil war, which has moved backwards and forwards for the past months, has been bogged down for weeks on the fringes of Brega, about 750 km (465 miles) east of Tripoli. Zawawi said rebel forces were in sight of a residential area of Brega and believed they could take the town, which is south of the rebel capital Benghazi on the eastern side of the Gulf of Sirte. "It could be very soon, but we don't want to lose anybody so we're moving slowly but surely," he said. In Misrata, a Qatari plane made a quick stop to offload ammunition destined for rebel fighters, sources with knowledge of the flight said. Airport officials acknowledged a Qatari plane had landed but declined to reveal details of its contents. "The plane offloaded six pickup trucks which were packed with ammunition, and minutes later it flew off again," said one source, speaking on condition of anonymity. Rebels have complained about a lack of weapons and ammunition to effectively push forward to the capital. France has also supplied ammunition and weapons in air-drops. Qatar has been one of staunchest supporters of Libyans seeking to topple Muammar Gaddafi from power. PROPAGANDA BATTLES Friday was another day of claim and counter-claim in the six-month-old war now being waged on three fronts -- in the Western Mountains southwest of Tripoli, near Misrata to the east of the capital, and around Brega between Misrata and Benghazi. Gaddafi's government on Friday denied a rebel report a NATO air strike on Zlitan, a town west of Misrata, had killed the Libyan leader's son Khamis who commands of one of the government's most loyal and best-equipped units. Government spokesman Moussa Ibrahim said word of Khamis Gaddafi's death was a ploy to cover up the killing of three civilians in Zlitan, a battlefront city where Gaddafi forces are trying to halt the rebel advance on Tripoli. "It's false news. This is a dirty trick to cover up their crime in Zlitan," he told Reuters. A rebel spokesman said the NATO air strike had killed 32 Gaddafi loyalists in Zlitan, where Khamis Gaddafi's elite 32nd Brigade is believed to have been leading the defence of the approaches to Tripoli, 160 kilometres away. NATO said it had targeted a command-and-control target in the Zlitan area but "cannot confirm anything right now because we don't have people on the ground". Tripoli also was rocked by a long series of explosions starting around 2 a.m. local time on Sunday (0000 GMT), producing giant plumes of smoke. Planes could be heard overhead and flames could be seen in the distance. Libyan state television said NATO airstrikes had hit civilian and military targets in Tripoli. PUSHING WESTWARDS Rebels who cleared Gaddafi's forces from Libya's third-largest city Misrata after weeks of intense fighting have been trying to push westwards and take Zlitan, which would open the coastal road toward his Tripoli stronghold. There have been two reports of Khamis's death in the past six months: Arab media reported in March he had died in a kamikaze crash by a disaffected Libyan air force pilot. Libyan state television countered with pictures of a man resembling Khamis, which it said disproved the report of his death. The government said earlier this year a NATO strike in Tripoli had killed Gaddafi's son Saif al-Arab, who unlike Khamis did not have a high public profile or a major leadership role. Gaddafi has kept control of the capital despite severe fuel shortages and rebel advances backed since March by Western air strikes, assault helicopter attacks and naval bombardments. The rebels face numerous problems, from stalling battlefield momentum to internal splits, exposed starkly last week when military chief Abdel Fattah Younes was assassinated behind his own lines in circumstances yet to be explained. Near the capital, rebels also control the Western Mountains southwest of Tripoli. A rebel official there, Colonel Juma Ibrahim, told Reuters his forces had set an ultimatum to the surrounded town of Tiji to surrender or face attack on Saturday. Rebels were using loud-hailers to appeal to a tribal chief close to Gaddafi to evacuate civilians from Tiji and broker the withdrawal of pro-Gaddafi forces. "If he does not comply, we will attack," said Ibrahim. (Additional reporting by Michael Georgy in the Western Mountains and Mussab Al-Khairalla in Misrata; Writing by Douglas Hamilton; Editing by Michael Roddy) Copyright © 2011 Reuters Full Feed Generated by Get Full RSS, sponsored by Used Car Search. | ||
| Quarter-million Israelis march for economic reform Posted: 06 Aug 2011 09:19 PM PDT TEL AVIV (Reuters) - A quarter-million Israelis marched on Saturday for lower living costs in an escalating protest that has catapulted the economy onto the political agenda and put pressure on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Netanyahu planned to name a cabinet-level team on Sunday to address demands by the demonstrators, who in under a month have swollen from a cluster of student tent-squatters into a diffuse, countrywide mobilisation of Israel's burdened middle class. Israel projects growth of 4.8 percent this year at a time of economic stagnation in many Western countries, and has relatively low unemployment of 5.7 percent. But business cartels and wage disparities have kept many citizens from feeling the benefit. "The People Demand Social Justice" read one of the march banners, which mostly eschewed partisan anti-government messages while confronting Netanyahu's free-market doctrines. Police said at least 250,000 people took part in Saturday's march in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and other cities, a greater turnout than at marches on the two previous weekends. Demonstrations on such a scale in Israel -- population 7.7 million -- have usually been over issues of war and peace. In a "Peace Index" poll conducted by two Israeli academics, around half of respondents said wage disparities -- among the widest of OECD countries -- should be the government's priority, while 18 percent cited the dearth of affordable housing. Some 31 percent cited the stalled Middle East peace talks, Israel's international image, or the need to bolster the armed forces. The demonstrations have upstaged Netanyahu's standoff with the Palestinians ahead of their bid to lobby for U.N. recognition of statehood next month. Protests also deflated his celebration of Israel's stability as citizen revolts rock surrounding Arab states across the Middle East and North Africa. "There has been nothing like this for decades -- all these people coming together, taking to the streets, demanding change. It's a revolution," said Baroch Oren, a 33-year-old protest leader. The conservative coalition government has vowed to free up more state-owned land for development, build more low-rent housing and improve public transport. It also wants to lower dairy prices with more imports and boost medical staff numbers to address demands by striking doctors. But the demands submitted by the National Union of Israeli Students go much further in calling for an expansion of free education and bigger government housing budgets. Communications Minister Moshe Kahlon, named by a Netanyahu spokesman as a likely member of the cabinet troubleshooting team, said a solution was required even if it "cost billions" at a time when Israel is watching the debt jitters of the United States and parts of Europe. Israel's debt burden is 75 percent of GDP, lower than that of most major Western economies. Interviewed by Israel Radio on Friday, Kahlon floated tax cuts and a breakup of cartels to benefit the middle class. "If anything, this demonstration is a demonstration of trust in Netanyahu -- though that may sound upside-down: 'Sir, we demand of you, we insist, you know how to, you are capable of fixing this,'" Kahlon said, noting the lack of support for the centrist political opposition. But he faulted Netanyahu and Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz for trumpeting Israel's macroeconomic indicators. "On the one hand we say we have a strong economy, on the other hand large groups of people are seeing that it is not reaching them. Hence the frustration and the outcry," he said. (Writing by Dan Williams; Editing by Kevin Liffey) Copyright © 2011 Reuters Full Feed Generated by Get Full RSS, sponsored by Used Car Search. |
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