As the uprising in Libya enters its tenth day, we keep you updated on the developing situation from our headquarters in Doha, Qatar.
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(All times are local in Libya GMT+2)
February 23, 2011
9:20am As of last count, there are at least four satirical Gaddafi Twitter accounts in operation: @MuammarLGaddafi, @MuammarGaddafi1, @AlQathafy and @TheRealColonel. If making fun of the situation in Libya strikes you as cold-hearted, keep in mind that Egyptians have used dark humour before, during and after their revolt both to undermine the country's repressive leadership and to buoy their own spirits.
Some selections from Gaddafi's Twitter doppelgangers:
@TheRealColonel: #neverwilli quit! Never! I don't care how long the queue is for Space Mountain, I'm not going to miss this ride!
@MuammarLGaddafi: I have multiple positions open! Send resume to (jobs@alghtafi.org)
@MuammarGaddafi1: keeping you updated of my tweets in Libya. Beautiful day in the streets minus these nagging people
@AlQathafy: Give me 42 more years & I'll prove you all wrong #Lybia #Libia #Feb17 #Gadafi #Kadhafi
9:09am Australia's ABC Radio phoned a man named Abdul in Tripoli this morning. He described "Black Africans" in army clothes driving around in jeeps; jets and helicopters circling the city (but not dropping bombs); and regime backers distributing guns to anyone who said they supported Gaddafi:
8:41am Regarding those screengrabs below, they apparently come from this rare video that has emerged of yellow-hard-hatted regime backers apparently rampaging through a Libyan city. According to YouTube user Muttardi, who posted the video, these are "mercenaries" attacking in Benghazi on Thursday. The screams of terrified onlookers are chilling:
8:38am Sultan Al Qassemi, a UAE-based columnist and prolific Twitter user, has tweeted images grabbed from our sister station Al Jazeera Arabic apparently showing rare images of street battles between security forces - he calls them "mercenaries" - and civilians:
8:32am Around 3,000 Turkish citizens boarded two Seacat ferries docked at the eastern city of Benghazi early on Wednesday, according to the Reuters news agency. The Orhan Gazi ferry left at 3:30 am with 1,500 and the Osman Gazi left an hour and a half later with another 1,500.
Around 20,000 Turks remain in Libya.
8:19am @AbdulHamidAhmad, the editor in chief of Gulf News, tweets:
Libyan Interior Minister Abdel Fattah Younes has been reportedly kidnapped in Benghazi after he had resigned to join protesters.
@CNNValencia, the journalist Nick Valencia, follows up:
BREAKING- State Media: Libya's interior minister who resigned to support anti-govt protesters has been kidnapped #CNN
8:10am Al Jazeera's Nazanine Moshiri, on the Tunisian border with Libya, reports that the situation remains uncertain and tense. Around 10,000 Tunisians have left Libya so far, and military commanders on the Tunisian side are quizzing emigrants about events inside Libya, asking those leaving questions such as whether there are any tanks on the road.
7:51am Al Jazeera's Omar el-Salah wraps up the Libyan regime's first press conference since the revolt began, in which high-ranking officials accuse Qatar and Al Jazeera of spreading lies and teaming up with high-paid Libyan and Egyptian "sheikhs" to foment the unrest:
7:41am Latin American leaders who have long been friendly with Gaddafi - such as Venezuela's Hugo Chavez and Cuba's Fidel Castro - are being noticeably silent on the revolt in Libya and its violent suppression, Al Jazeera's Lucia Newman notes. Though Castro has suggested NATO might be planning an invasion of Libya, neither he nor Chavez has gone as far as Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega and offered actual support for Gaddafi.
7:35am Most of the Libyans coming into Egypt through the crossing at the town of Salloum are from Benghazi, Al Jazeera's Hoda Abdel Hamid reports from the border. The level of anxiety in that town has increased after Gaddafi's Tuesday-night speech, which many took as an indication that violence will increase.
7:32am More evidence of the spread of the uprising in Libya; this video shows protesters bringing down Gaddafi's Green Book in Misrata, around 175km east of the capital, Tripoli:
7:25am Our colleague Azad Essa wrote on Monday that anti-government movements in sub-Saharan Africa were being ignored at the expense of uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt and now Libya (not to mention elsewhere in the Arab world). It does seem that the protests sweeping across northern Africa are having knock-on effect among southern neighbors; @SaeedCNN tweets:
#Cameroon plans "Egypt-like protests" today. They're calling on Prez Paul Biya to step down. He's been in power for almost 30 yrs
7:21am @LibyaCyrenaica tweets:
JUST IN: News of approx. 300 prisoners found in underground cells at Al Fadhel Bu Omar Barracks in Benghazi today #Libya
7:11am Libyan students in the United States are free to protest however they wish and will not have their scholarships affected if they decline to attend pro-Gaddafi rallies, the Libyan embassy has said. The announcement comes in reaction to a story our colleague Evan Hill published on Thursday that aired allegations from Libyan students that they were being coerced by the embassy.
The announcement came in a letter dated Saturday but emailed to students on Sunday from Dr. Basil al-Aishi, an employee of the Canadian Bureau for International Education, which administers the Libyan study-abroad program, as well as those for other countries.
Aishi told students that reports in the media - presumably ours - were wrong, "far from the truth," and meant to stir up discord among Libyan students in the United States. He says that the embassy had nothing to do with pro-Gaddafi protests that had been arranged in Washington DC this past weekend, and that the leader of the Libyan student union in the United States had arranged them. Students should hopefully receive their regular scholarship stipend payment by the end of the week, he said.
7:03am Al Jazeera's Hoda Abdel Hamid has reached the Egyptian town of Salloum on the border with Libya and reports that there is a long queue of cars waiting to leave the strife-torn country.
6:39am CNN's Ben Wedemann, normally based in Cairo, entered Libya through the eastern border and has filed what might be the first report from inside the country by an English-language television news network:
6:24am Wondering how videos and images of the revolt in Libya have managed to get out, despite a chokehold on communications lines out of the country? Time magazine reports that Libyans crossed the border to use the Internet in the Egyptian town of Marsa Matrouh, which became of the one "media centers" of the revolution.
From Tawfik al-Shaiby, a chemical engineer: "I went to Egypt every day to give (my brother) a flash disk full of media from Tobruk, al-Baida, Benghazi. They were videos from mobiles. Not just mine. We made copies, went to the Egyptian border at Salloum and gave it to someone there - my cousin's son - and he went to Matruh, where my brother was."
Time also quotes Gamal Shallouf, a marine biologist, who credited Al-Jazeera and Facebook for spreading news of nearby revolts in Egypt and Tunisia that Libyans would never have received before.
6:16am Here's video of ex-Libyan interior minister (and army general) Abdul Fatah Younis delivering his resignation last night:
6:09am Omar Turbi, a Libyan-American businessman and commenter on Arab political affairs, tells Al Jazeera that those dismayed at the US response to the crisis in Libya should give Barack Obama some time.
"For God's sake, Reagan ... took three years before Poland was pushed over the edge and changed," he said. Just because the United States hasn't called for an end to Gaddafi's regime doesn't mean the Obama administration doesn't want to see it happen, he said. Officials are probably envisioning "nightmare" scenarios in which they make such a call and Gaddafi remains for six months or a year. Furthermore, Turbi said, many US citizens remain in the country waiting to be evacuated.
6:00am More evidence that suggests foreign troops are being used in Libya - or at least that Libyans believe this to be the case. This video of a dead man shows someone holding what appear to be identification documents, possibly a passport, that looks like it bears the name "Republique du Niger" and the country's coat of arms. There is no way to verify whether the man bore arms.
5:54am Peru has become the first country to sever diplomatic ties with Libya in the wake of the Gaddafi regime's brutal suppression of the uprising there. Foreign minister Jose Antonio Garcia Belaunde said he would ask the United Nations to impose a no-fly zone over the country. Peru's action sets itself apart from at least one nearby country, Nicaragua, which has offered support to Gaddafi.
5:49am In the past hour, Abdul Fatah Younis, the resigned Libyan interior minister who gave a wide-ranging interview to Al-Arabiya last night in which he asked Gaddafi to "please end your life," also told CNN that he expected Gaddafi's regime to fall "in a matter of days or hours".
5:32am From an intermediary, we've received mobile phone footage from a young Libyan in Tripoli that allegedly depicts gunfire in the Zawid Dahmani neighborhood of the capital last night, amid an ongoing and extremely violent security crackdown. You can hear a large explosion in the background - we're told it occurred at the "TV building" in the neighborhood. You can also hear a baby crying.
5:10am From Foreign Policy magazine: A Regime We Can Trust - How did the West get Qaddafi so wrong?
4:51am The first major evacuation vessel sponsored by the US Government is set to evacuate American citizens from Libya. Following is a Warden message by the American embassy in Tripoli:
A US Government chartered ferry will depart Tripoli from the As-shahab Port in central Tripoli, located on the sea road across from the Radisson Blu Mahari Hotel, for Valletta, Malta on Wednesday, February 23. Processing of passengers will begin promptly at 10:00am local time. US citizen travelers wishing to depart should proceed as soon as possible after 9:00am to the pier and arrive no later than 10:00am US citizens will be processed on a first-come, first-served basis, with priority given to persons with medical emergencies or severe medical conditions. The ferry will depart no later than 3:00pm. Travelers should bring valid travel documents and any necessary medications.
Each traveler may bring one suitcase and a small personal carry-on item.
3:15am People fleeing Libya's bloody unrest continue to arrive at airports in Europe tonight. At Frankfurt airport, in Germany, evacuees expressed their relief to be back home. British passenger John Dowley says that "thousands" of people were at the airport trying to leave the country.
Today in the airport was absolute chaos. Many people from North Africa trying to leave and get home.
[Photo by Reuters]
2:39am Libya is one of the most tribal nations in the Arab world - a country where clans and alliances shape the political landscape. Tribal structure has played a crucial role in the country's history.
Al Jazeera's Dorsa Jabbari takes a look at the country's tribal system.
1:55am: Peru becomes the first country to formally severe all diplomatic ties with Libya. President Alan Garcia said:
Peru is suspending all diplomatic relations with Libya until the violence against the people ceases.
Peru also strongly protests against the repression unleashed by the dictatorship of Muammar Gaddafi against the people who are demanding democratic reforms to change the government which has been led for 40 years by the same person.
1:50am: Know someone in Libya having problems getting online? Here's a handy pictoral guide, posted online, to setting up a proxy server in order to access the internet.
1:22am: Al Jazeera's Rawya Rageh says that all speakers in Libya's state TV press conference keep repeating that "assailants" and arrested men "are on hallucination pills". You can follow her at Twitter: @RawyaRageh
1:16am: Libyan official tells state TV they have arrested Tunisians, Egyptians and Algerians "trained to sow chaos".
1:14am: Uniformed Colonel now on Libyan state TV reciting poetry praising Gaddafi; describes him as "solid as Africa's dark mountains", tweets Al Jazeera's Rawya Rageh.
1:06am: In case you missed this must watch video we put up in the last few hours of February 22nd's blog, here it is again.
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