Libya rebels say “close in” on Gaddafi
August 27, 2011 by Trend PK
Filed under World News
TRIPOLI: Libyan rebels claimed to be close to capturing Muammar Gaddafi on Friday as their NATO backers bombed diehard loyalists in his tribal bastion, but there was no sign of an end to the war, or to international wrangling over Libya’s riches.
Leaders of the National Transitional Council, which has Western support, pressed foreign governments to release Libyan funds frozen abroad, warning of its urgent need to impose order and provide services to a population traumatised by six months of conflict and 42 years of eccentric, personal rule.
But Gaddafi’s long-time allies in Africa, beneficiaries of his oil-fueled largesse and sympathisers with a foreign policy he called anti-colonial, offered the fugitive strongman a grain of comfort and irked the rebels by refusing to follow Arab and Western powers in recognising the NTC as the legal government.
Combined with the reluctance of major powers like China, Russia and Brazil, to see Europeans and Americans dominate a nation with Africa’s biggest oil reserves, the African Union’s resistance may slow the pace at which funds are released.
Mahmoud Jibril, head of the government in waiting, said time was short. Visiting NATO member Turkey, he said: “We have to establish an army, strong police force to be able meet the needs of the people and we need capital and we need the assets.”
“All our friends in the international community speak of stability and security. We need that too.”
Rebel fighters took control of the main border post along the coastal road to Tunisia after clashes with pro-Gaddafi fighters, reopening a path for humanitarian aid and other supplies from Tunisia to Tripoli.
While many African states have recognised the NTC, the AU would not do so as long as fighting continued, South African President Jacob Zuma, a vocal advocate for Gaddafi, said after a meeting in Addis Ababa at which the AU called for all sides in the conflict to negotiate peace and work for democracy.
Rebel leaders are determined to show they are in charge, though estimates vary of when the NTC will move formally from its Benghazi base in the east to the war zone that is Tripoli.
“We have come to operate the country. We are now the legal authority,” declared Mohammed al-Alagi, a lawyer who has been the NTC’s justice minister for some months, as he met foreign journalists in the capital wearing a rebel flag as a bandana. AGENCIES
Libya rebels cheer in Tripoli, Gadhafi’s sons held
August 21, 2011 by Trend PK
Filed under Breaking News
Moammar Gadhafi says he'll stay in Tripoli 'until the end'
TRIPOLI, Libya — Libyan rebels waved opposition flags and shot into the air in jubilation after reaching Tripoli’s central Green Square, Sky news live footage from the scene showed in the early hours of Monday.
The vast square, reserved until now for carefully orchestrated rallies praising Moammar Gadhafi, erupted in celebration after rebel troops pushed into the center of the Libyan capital overnight.
The rebel leadership said Gadhafi’s son and one-time heir apparent Seif al-Islam had been arrested.Rebel leaders later said a second Gadhafi son, Mohammed, and the top military unit in charge of protecting the Libyan leader surrendered.
Associated Press reporters with the rebels said they met little resistance as they moved from the western outskirts into the capital in a dramatic turning of the tides in the 6-month-old Libyan civil war. The rebels took control of one neighborhood, Ghot Shaal, on the western edge of the city. They set up checkpoints as rebel trucks rolled into Tripoli.
One of the rebels, Mohammed al-Zawi, 30, said he was in a convoy of more than 10 trucks that entered Ghot Shaal. He said they progressed as far as the neighborhood of Girgash, about a mile and a half from Green Square, where Gadhafi supporters have gathered nightly throughout the uprising to rally for their leader of more than 40 years.
He said the rebels came under fire from a sniper on a rooftop in the neighborhood.
“They will enter Green Square tonight, God willing,” al-Zawi said.
Sidiq al-Kibir, the rebel leadership council’s representative for the capital Tripoli, confirmed the arrest of Seif al-Islam to the AP but did not give any further details.
Earlier, Gadhafi said he will stay in Tripoli “until the end” and called on his supporters around the country to help liberate the capital from a rebel offensive.
He said in an audio message played over state television he was “afraid that Tripoli will burn” and he said he would provide weapons to supporters to fight off the rebels.
Libya oil output stops after attacks: rebels
April 7, 2011 by Trend PK
Filed under Breaking News
BENGHAZI: Production at rebel-held oilfields in eastern Libya has stopped after they came under attack from forces loyal to Muammar Gaddafi, a rebel spokesman said on Wednesday.
Oilfields in Misla and the Waha area were hit by Gaddafi’s artillery on Tuesday and Wednesday, spokesman Hafiz Ghoga told reporters in the rebel stronghold of Benghazi.
“These oilfields are the ones that pump oil to Tobruk,” said Ghoga. “They stopped pumping today.”
Both fields are in the desert, hundreds of kilometres south of the rebel-held town of Ajdabiyah. Rebels have been trying to resume exports to raise revenue for their uprising.
Ghoga said Gaddafi’s forces hit Waha’s field 103 on Wednesday and Misla on Tuesday after a previous attack there at the weekend.
“These oilfields are the ones that pump oil to Tobruk. What we have marketed is what we have in reserve in Tobruk. We have one million barrels (in reserve).”
He added that until Tuesday the rebel-held east Libyan fields were pumping 100,000 barrels per day. Damage from the latest attacks was still being assessed.
“It was not an air strike, it was from the ground using vehicles. The vehicles had artillery on them,” he said.
“We are now providing more protection. We have even moved people from the front (to the fields),” Ghoga said.
He did not give details of the damage although when the first Misla attack was reported at the weekend, the rebels said a diesel storage tank was hit and the damage was not very serious.
The Liberian-registered tanker Equator sailed from Marsa el Hariga, near Tobruk, earlier on Wednesday apparently with the first cargo of crude sold by rebels since their uprising against Gaddafi began in February, shipping sources said.
Ghoga added: “We hope that production will continue at the rate of the past but because of the damage that has come to our fields because of Gaddafi’s military tools, our production has been affected.”
“We have a quantity of oil that needs to be marketed so that oil production does not stop and cause problems and it is in the port of Marsa el Hariga, but Colonel Gaddafi is trying to stop our efforts by hitting the oil fields.”
Libya was producing around 1.6 million barrels per day of oil and exporting some 1.3 bpd before the uprising. AGENCIES
US convicts Singapore man in Tamil Tigers arms plot
October 19, 2010 by Trend PK
Filed under World News
WASHINGTON: A federal jury in Baltimorehas convicted a Singapore national of conspiring to provideweapons to Tamil Tiger rebels operating in Sri Lanka, the U.S.Justice Department said on Monday.
Balraj Naidu, 48, was charged in a conspiracy to provide material support to the rebel group designated in 1997 by the U.S. Department of State as a foreign terrorist organization.
According to evidence presented at his trial, Naidu and four co-conspirators arranged to buy some 28 tons of U.S.-made weapons and ammunition from an undercover business in Maryland.
Tamil Tiger representatives made a $250,000 down-payment on the $900,000 weapons deal with the bogus company in the summer of 2006, the Justice Department said.
Naidu’s partners were arrested in Sept. 2006, after inspecting the weapons that had been delivered to Guam and making another payment of
jimmy rebel
May 24, 2010 by Trend PK
Filed under World News
Hey there, Boondockers! I just want to tell you that I almost died getting this episode recap done. Not that it will stop you from making fun of me, I am just saying.
Anyway, tonight’s episode is Uncle-Ruckus-centric, which means just one thing: huge, mind-boggling amounts of racism. And that’s good! Not the racist part, but the part where The Boondocks gets to deploy lots of satire, which is what it’s good at. Also, Aaron McGruder clearly has a blast writing these things, so he tends to pull out all the stops and present us — and by us, I mean white people, or in my case, half-white people, with material that he knows we’re going to laugh at really hard and then feel bad about.
In this episode, we learn that Uncle Ruckus has long idolized Jimmy Rebel, a popular racist country singer based on the infamous Johnny Reb, a.k.a. Pee Wee Trahan. Should you be unfamiliar with Trahan’s work, he’s really just about as bad as he’s portrayed in this episode, though thankfully, not nearly as popular. (At one point, the fake Jimmy Rebel presents Grandpa Freeman with a CD called Real Niggers Never Die, They Just Smell That Way, which, believe it or not, is the name of an actual Johnny Reb song.) So much did Jimmy Rebel’s music
Sri Lanka Seizes Tamil Tiger Rebel Ship
December 21, 2009 by Trend PK
Filed under World News
COLOMBO: Sri Lanka’s military said Monday it had seized a cargo ship suspected of being an arms smuggling vessel used by the defeated Tamil Tiger rebels at an undisclosed foreign port.
Navy spokesman Captain Athula Senarath said the 90-metre (300-feet) long Princess Christina had been captured at a foreign port but refused to reveal the location or identify the country.
“We can’t say from where we seized the ship, but we deployed our own crew and brought it to Sri Lankan territorial waters,” he said.
Sri Lanka Seizes Tamil Tiger Rebel Ship was first posted on December 21, 2009 at 3:51 pm.
