Gathafi accused of dirty tricks in besieged city

Pro-Gathafi soldiers reportedly losing their grip in battle for Misrata amid sinking morale.

Middle East Online

By Marc Bastian – MISRATA, Libya

The battle for Libya continues Libyan rebels accused Moamer Gathafi of playing dirty games in Misrata where salvos of Grad rockets exploded Sunday in apparent contradiction of his regime's vow to halt fire in the western city. In a Misrata hospital, meanwhile, two captured pro-Gathafi soldiers said that loyalist forces were losing their grip in the battle for the western port, and that their morale was sinking. "Many soldiers want to surrender but they are afraid of being executed" by the rebels, said Lili Mohammed, a Mauritanian mercenary hired by the Gathafi regime to fight insurgents in the country's third city. "Gathafi forces are losing" in Misrata, said Misbah Mansuri, 25, another wounded loyalist fighter who said he was forcibly enlisted 45 days ago. Both Mohammed and Mansuri said separately from their hospital room in the presence of a doctor, saying officers had abandoned the troops and their supply lines were cut. Deputy Foreign Minister Khaled Kaim said early on Sunday the army had suspended operations against rebels in Misrata, but not left the city, to enable local tribes to find a peaceful solution. "The armed forces have not withdrawn from Misrata. They have simply suspended their operations," he told a news conference in Tripoli. "The tribes are determined to solve the problem within 48 hours... We believe that this battle will be settled peacefully and not militarily." But Colonel Omar Bani, the military spokesman of the rebels' Transitional National Council, said Gathafi was "playing a really dirty game" aimed at dividing his opponents. "It is a trick, they didn't go," Bani said in the eastern rebel stronghold of Benghazi, adding: "They have stayed a bit out of Tripoli Street but they are preparing themselves to attack again." Kaim had previously announced the army would withdraw from Misrata and leave local tribes to resolve the conflict there, either by talks or through force. But later on Sunday bursts of automatic weapons fire could be heard and Grad rockets exploded in the city, the scene of deadly urban guerrilla fighting for weeks between rebels and Gathafi loyalists. Misrata suffered its worst toll in 65 days of fighting on Saturday, with 28 dead and 100 wounded compared with a daily average of 11 killed, according to Doctor Khalid Abu Falra at Misrata's main private clinic. "We're overwhelmed, overwhelmed. We lack everything: personnel, equipment and medicines," Falra said. NATO warplanes staged raids on civil and military sites in Tripoli and other cities, JANA news agency said, without giving casualty numbers. Earlier raids by the alliance struck near a compound in the capital where Gathafi resides. Three explosions rocked Tripoli late Saturday as NATO warplanes overflew the capital, AFP journalists said, after several earlier blasts in the city centre and outlying districts. Heavy anti-aircraft and automatic arms fire was also heard across Tripoli. In his traditional Easter message on Sunday, Pope Benedict XVI called for "diplomacy and dialogue" in Libya. "In the current conflict in Libya, may diplomacy and dialogue take the place of arms and may those who suffer as a result of the conflict be given access to humanitarian aid," the pope said. "That the light of peace and of human dignity may overcome the darkness of division, hate and violence" in the Middle East, he added in the message known as "Urbi et Orbi" (To the City and the World). A French journalist shot in the neck in Misrata was in intensive care on Sunday after undergoing surgery, medics said. Friends refused to identify the journalist, a blogger who worked for "alternative media." And Manu Brabo, a Spanish photographer who has been held in Libya for almost three weeks, has phoned his parents for the first time to say he is being well treated in a military prison in Tripoli, Spanish radio said. Gathafi's regime accused the United States, which has launched its first Predator drone strike on a rocket launcher targeting Misrata, of "new crimes against humanity" for deploying the low-flying, unmanned aircraft. At the prized western gate into Ajdabiya, a lull in the fighting has given families some respite in their search for loved ones who have gone missing in and around the strategic crossroads city. "As things calm down, people are building up the courage to come out and report," said Najim Miftah, a volunteer who has a binder of missing people that has doubled in two days with more than 70 new records. NATO said it had kept a "high operational tempo" of more than 3,000 sorties, nearly half of them strikes, since the transatlantic military alliance assumed full control of the mission late last month. An aid ship delivered 160 tonnes of food and medicine to the port city on Saturday before a planned evacuation of around 1,000 stranded refugees. Hundreds of Libyan families had lined up along the harbour front in hope of getting on board the vessel chartered by the International Organisation for Migration. But Dakir Hussam, a Syrian electrician, expressed his delight at managing to get a place on the Red Star One. "Gathafi's men shoot at anything that moves in the city, but they are also suffering a lot," he said, referring to the burial he saw of up to a dozen loyalist fighters this week. The UN refugee agency says about 15,000 people have fled fighting in western Libya into Tunisia in the past two weeks and a much larger exodus was feared. Massive Libyan protests in February -- inspired by the revolts that toppled long-time autocrats in Egypt and Tunisia -- escalated into war when Gathafi's troops fired on demonstrators and protesters seized several eastern towns. The battle lines have been more or less static in recent weeks, however, as NATO air strikes have helped block Gathafi's eastward advance but failed to give the poorly organised and outgunned rebels a decisive victory.