TRIPOLI, Libya (AP) — Libyan rebels who took control of Moammar Gadhafi’s sprawling compound made a surprising discovery in one of the buildings: a photo album with pictures of Condoleezza Rice.
Though maybe the discovery isn’t that surprising. Over the years, the Libyan leader’s comments and actions related to the former secretary of state have raised a few eyebrows. More…
Libya is entering the third month of fighting since a rebellion began in February. Today prosecutors from the International Criminal Court in The Hague issued arrest warrants for Libyan leader Moammar Khadafy, his son Saif al-Islam Khadafy, and his brother-in-law Abdullah Al-Sanousi for organizing attacks on civilians during the uprising. Last week, rebels pushed out government troops from the Misrata airport, ending the shelling of that city. Despite air support from NATO, a grinding stalemate endures. Collected here are pictures of the rebellion and daily life in the country of over six million. — Lane Turner
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Artist Salhen Obaidi cleans his hands after painting a mural in downtown Benghazi on May 15. Hundreds of new paintings and graffiti decorate the city of Benghazi since the rebels took control of the city. (Rodrigo Abd/AP)
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A boy jumps from the seaside boulevard to the beach in Benghazi on May 14. (Rodrigo Abd/AP)
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Women observe an anti-Moammar Khadafy demonstration from a burnt building in central Benghazi on May 14. (Rodrigo Abd/AP)
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A boy attends a rally near the courthouse in Benghazi May 14. The protesters were calling on the International Criminal Court to issue arrest warrants for Libya’s leader Moammar Khadafy. They got their wish. (Mohammed Salem/Reuters)
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Tribesmen in traditional garb ride their horses into town to declare allegiance to the rebels in Revolution Square in Benghazi on May 4. (Saeed Khan/AFP/Getty Images)
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A wounded rebel fighter is given aid in an ambulance at the Libyan and Tunisian border crossing of Wazin May 8. (Zohra Bensemra/AP)
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Libyan rebels walk in a stairwell after firing a rocket-propelled grenade towards pro-Khadafy forces from a high vantage point in Misrata on May 8. (Ricardo Garcia Vilanova/AP)
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People stand next to caricatures of Moammar Khadafy in Benghazi May 8. (Mohammed Salem/Reuters)
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Libyan men react as the main fuel depot in Misrata burns after a bombing by government forces on May 7. (Ricardo Garcia Vilanova/AP)
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Ramzy Elshahiebi smokes a cigarette while assembling homemade bombs in Benghazi. Elshahiebi used to fish with dynamite and now makes bombs that serve the rebel army. (Rodrigo Abd/AP)
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A rebel fighter stands guard outside Kabaw in the Western Mountain region of Libya on May 11. Fighting in the Western Mountain region, home to the Berber ethnic minority, has intensified since the rebels seized the Dehiba border crossing into Tunisia last month, opening a key artery for supplies. (Zohra Bensemra/Reuters)
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A man waves a national flag from the pre-Moammar Khadafy era on the seafront in Benghazi on May 11. (Rodrigo Abd/AP)
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A Libyan teenager salutes as he controls traffic at a busy junction in Benghazi on May 9. Children in Benghazi are not being sent to fight on the frontline, but they are helping Libya’s revolution by cleaning streets, working as traffic cops, and dishing up rations to rebel soldiers. (Saeed Khan/AFP/Getty Images)
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In this photo taken on a government-organized tour, the Marriott hotel is seen in the background as youths enjoy the beach in Tripoli on May 3. The Tripoli Marriott closed 10 days after it opened, as an armed uprising swept the country. (Darko Bandic/AP)
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A Libyan rebel fighter walks near a checkpoint outside Ajdabiya on May 10, where fighting between rebels and forces loyal to leader Moammar Khadafy was ongoing. (Saeed Khan/AFP/Getty Images)
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Rebel fighter Abdel Rahaman Faraj, 15, grimaces as he is treated by a nurse in a public hospital in Benghazi on May 10. Faraj was injured two months ago in Bisher during fighting against Moammar Khadafy’s troops. (Rodrigo Abd/AP)
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Libyan youths sing near a courthouse in Benghazi May 12. (Mohammed Salem/Reuters)
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An injured Libyan rebel fighter flashes a victory sign from an ambulance after being evacuated from Misrata at the port in Benghazi on May 12. (Saeed Khan/AFP/Getty Images)
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A wounded girl evacuated from the besieged Libyan city of Misrata waits to be transported to an ambulance at the port in Benghazi on May 12. (Saeed Khan/AFP/Getty Images)
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A rebel fighter patrols in the desert south of the Libyan rebel-held town of Zintan in the Western Mountains on May 12. (Zohra Bensemra/Reuters)
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A boy rests on a street light pole in downtown in Benghazi on May 5. (Rodrigo Abd/AP)
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A Libyan girl looks at pictures of people killed or missing since the uprising began three months ago on the wall of court house in Benghazi’s Revolution Square on May 15. (Saeed Khan/AFP/Getty Images)
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Libyan volunteers prepare food for rebel fighters and internally displaced people at a kitchen in Benghazi on May 15. (Saeed Khan/AFP/Getty Images)
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Libyan rebels surround a house where a soldier loyal to Moammar Khadafy took refuge after killing a rebel during a battle in the town of Tamina, Libya on May 13. (Ricardo Garcia Vilanova/AFP/Getty Images)
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A Libyan rebel stands guard on top of a roof overlooking thousands performing noon prayers in Revolution Square in Benghazi on May 13. (Saeed Khan/AFP/Getty Images)
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A Libyan woman walks on a street of Benghazi May 9 holding a picture of her late son, who allegedly died in a Libyan prison in 1996. (Bernat Armangue/AP)
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Volunteers work to recover and bury dead bodies for health and religious reasons in Misrata on May 4. Misrata doctors estimate that more than 1,000 people have been killed in their city in two months of fighting. (Bernat Armangue/AP)
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Relatives mourn during the funeral of Abdul-Gader Al-Faitori, a rebel fighter who died after being injured a month ago during combat in Benghazi on May 4. (Rodrigo Abd/AP)
TRIPOLI, May 10 (Reuters) – A number of blasts were heard from apparent NATO missile strikes targeting Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi’s compound and other sites in Tripoli on Tuesday, witnesses said.
Libyan officials said four children were wounded, two of them seriously, by flying glass caused by blasts from NATO strikes in the Tripoli area overnight.
Officials showed foreign journalists a hospital in the Libyan capital where some windows had been shattered, saying the damage was the result of a NATO strike that toppled a nearby telecommunications tower.
The journalists were also taken to a government building housing the high commission for children that had been completely destroyed. The old colonial building had been damaged before in what officials said was a NATO strike on April 30.
No other information was immediately available, but the Tripoli blasts occurred against a backdrop of a stalemate in the rebel war to unseat Gaddafi and the resulting dilemma for Western powers over whether to offer covert aid to the rebels.
By Guy Desmond | Tue May 10, 2011 3:39am GMT
On May 8th, 1984, 27 years ago, a Libyan opposition group called the National Front for the Salvation of Libya, attempted to overthrow the violent regime of Muammar Gaddafi and install a democratic government. The opposition group, led by Ahmed Ibrahim Ihwas, bravely attacked Gaddafi’s secure Bab Azizia compound. A reported 80 members of NFSL died in the fighting; Gaddafi escaped alive.
The retaliation of the Gaddafi regime was brutal and swift. Over 2,000 Libyans were arrested and 8 others were hanged publicly. The footage of their hangings was repeatedly aired on Libyan State TV.
Gaddafi’s revenge on the opposition didn’t end on May 8th. His Revolutionary Committee operatives terrorized Libyan citizens for months, shooting guns late in the night and executing more than 120 more people in public squares. People— as many as 5,000— were rounded up in concentration camps in the middle of the desert. Hundreds perished.
Today, 27 years later, Libyans remember the martyrs of the May 8th, 1984 coup attempt. Revolutionaries, freedom fighters, “rebels”— they are only one group of many generations of Libyans who died for the cause of liberty.
Benghazi, Libya (CNN) — Two months ago, Massoud Ojeli was in college, studying English — but now, he works at a secret makeshift weapons factory in Libya, welding together spare parts to make arms for the country’s opposition forces.
“It’s a very weird feeling, but I’m proud of this,” the 20-year-old Ojeli says with a smile, in between his work crafting rocket launchers in a hot concrete warehouse space in the rebel stronghold of Benghazi.
The rebels granted CNN rare access to a place where elbow grease and ingenuity turn damaged and dented old weapons into rough-and-ready killing machines.
About 200 men volunteer at the factory, arriving around 8 a.m. and leaving around 3 p.m., when the sun is hottest over the dusty landscape.
They don’t get paid, but there is no shortage of help. Ojeli’s father volunteers at the factory, too, and his two little brothers hang around to offer moral support.
“I do this for my country,” Ojeli says.
Many of the men are soldiers who have defected from the regime of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, but others are newcomers.
Asked whether he knows what he’s doing at the weapons factory, Rami Tarhouni smiles and laughs.
“I don’t have idea,” he says. “I don’t have idea, but I’m trying.”
A few weeks ago, Tarhouni was an insurance agent. Another volunteer, Ali Abdul Salam, was in pharmaceuticals. He flashes a victory sign.
“People who’ve never seen weapons in their lives are making them from nothing,” says Col. Mohammed Algarobelli, who says he defected from Gadhafi’s air force.
In one part of the factory is an old weapons pod from an old jet fighter. By the time they’re done with it — if all goes well — the volunteers will have turned it into 32 shoulder-fired missile launchers.
Elsewhere, Soviet-era rocket launchers are broken up to fit on smaller vehicles like pickup trucks to go to the front lines.
Using whatever they can get their hands on can pay off in a place like this; a panel fitted with household light switches is used to launch the rockets from the back of the trucks. There’s never a guarantee of success, however.
“Sometimes we have something that doesn’t work,” Ojeli admits.
He says if he had his way, Gadhafi would be gone and he could go back to college. Until then, he says, he’s keeping his new job.
Down the dusty, bumpy road from Tobruk, along which every few miles upended chairs and thick ropes strung across the pavement stand as mute checkpoints – many of them abandoned by their one-time rebel guards – lies Benghazi, the seat of the Libyan uprising, still brave, still mad, incredulous of the predictions of its own demise.
Nearly a month after the onset of foreign air strikes – and my first abrupt departure from free east Libya –the rebel stronghold still stands, logic be damned.
In the centre of town, the main square has sprouted new flags and new martyr memorials. The bloody combat in western Misurata has provided ample fodder for the latter.
Women and children walk the streets more frequently, demonstrating and shopping for groceries in equal measure.
New graffiti dots the walls, new aid tents have sprung up on the sunny Mediterranean waterfront, and new French intelligence agents are rumoured to prowl the smoky lobby of the Tibesty, Benghazi’s most upscale hotel.
Mixing the comical with the deadly serious, life improbably goes on in Libya’s second-largest city.
On Sunday, rebels raided a suspected pro-Gaddafi safe house 24km outside of town, killed the occupants in a shoot-out and uncovered a cache of weapons and explosives.
Most residents assume such hideouts are numerous and that members of the lijan thawriya – Muammar Gaddafi’s revolutionary committees – are still hiding throughout the east, plotting to attack and sow disorder in the rebel community.
Friends told me rebels had uncovered piles of green regime army fatigues during fighting in Ajdabiya, implying the soldiers had changed into civilian clothes.
Many say Gaddafi’s troops now move about more frequently in civilian vehicles to avoid NATO air strikes and mix in with the rebels during their regular breakneck retreats down the highway from Brega to Ajdabiya.
Almost certainly, this is how loyalist soldiers have managed to swoop in and arrest at least nine foreign journalists in the past two weeks. CJ Chivers, a New York Times’ reporter on the front line, said four captured on April 5 were stopped by Gaddafi troops driving Mitsubishi pick-up trucks.
Nearly a month ago, on March 19, as mortar shells exploded among Benghazi’s residential neighbourhoods, Gaddafi’s troops prowled the outskirts of the city, and a column of his tanks and armoured vehicles snaked down the highway to the south, waiting to pummel the opposition bastion.
Journalists fled, and rebels fought running street battles with what they say were revolutionary committee “sleeper cells.”
Yaseen Kadura, one of many young Libyan-American men who came to the east after the uprising, told me that men in his family’s neighbourhood began preparing for its defense by making joulateen, explosives-packed bottles meant to blow up large amounts of fish. The neighbourhood, just a block from the Mediterranean, is known for its fishing, and the men had become expert gelatine makers.
As they worked on the street corner, a Daewoo car sped by and sprayed the walls with automatic gunfire. Nobody was injured.
“My cousin came up from behind and shot out of the wheels of the car,” Kadura said. They found guns and a satellite phone inside, and detained the men.
In the intervening weeks, American, British and French jets have pounded Gaddafi’s positions and the fighting now sits stalled around a dozen miles west of Ajdabiya. Despite the stalemate, the attitude among Benghazi residents doesn’t seem to have dimmed.
Either they don’t realise how close they came to destruction, how their struggle has become enmeshed with international politics and interminable desert artillery barrages, or, more likely, they choose to ignore it.
The ‘gladhander’
On Wednesday, I went to the Salmani cafe to meet a man I’ll call Nabil, who I first encountered in March, and his friend Salaheen.
Nabil comes from an old Benghazi family; his father was a prominent lawyer jailed in the 1970s for plotting against Gaddafi, and his grandfather was a deputy to Omar Mukhtar, the hero of Libya’s fight against Italian colonial occupation.
Nabil is a crisp dresser and expert gladhander, the kind of person everyone knows and greets, even if they don’t want to.
He says he wants to run for president in the new Libya.
He’s also a walking example of Benghazi’s mental block against acknowledging the possibility of a futile struggle.
He mixes the vulgar, the comic, and the serious. He described to me how on March 19, before NATO’s planes roared overhead, he and his family stood guard outside their house, next to their neighbours, ready to defend their property with AK-47s.
Between deep draws on a shisha, he also made a joke of Salaheen’s brother, who had been shot in the crotch during the climatic battle for Benghazi’s military garrison and had lost a testicle.
Elsewhere in the cafe, men smoked and sipped tea and coffee. The setting sun glazed the windows in orange, and it almost felt like we weren’t sitting in the middle of a city that could quite easily have been obliterated, its mosques razed into parking lots, like Zawiyah in the west.
Nabil treated it all with indifference.
“We fought the Italians for 20 years,” he said. “We will win against Gaddafi.”
Despite their lack of weapons, supplies and training, rebel fighters and Libyans in the east treat Gaddafi’s violent reprisals, more or less, with nonchalance. Sleeper cells and impending doom are almost annoyances.
Such confidence may have seemed foolhardy before, but it becomes less so as foreign heavy hitters align themselves behind the rebels.
Barack Obama, David Cameron and Nicolas Sarkozy have all declared that the international military campaign in Libya won’t end until Gaddafi leaves, Qatar has armed the rebels with Milan anti-tank missiles, and Britain has begun sending satellite phones and body armour.
The opposition fighters might still be stalled on the coastal highway, but momentum looks to be in their favour.
Maybe Nabil has been right all along.
By Evan Hill
April 15th, 2011.
