By Missy Ryan and Ulf Laessing
Libya's new masters offered a million-dollar bounty for the
fugitive Muammar Gaddafi, after he urged his men to fight on in battles across
parts of the capital.
A day after rebel forces
overran his Tripoli headquarters and trashed symbols of his 42-year rule,
scattered pockets of loyalist diehards kept the irregular fighters at bay as
they hunted Gaddafi and his sons. Rebels also reported fighting deep in the desert
and a standoff round Gaddafi's tribal home town.
In Tripoli, rockets and
shooting kept two million civilians indoors and gunfire rang out in the center
just before midnight on Wednesday. Most were anxious but hopeful the war would
soon end, and with it worsening shortages of food, water and medical supplies
-- both for hundreds of wounded and for the sick.
"Gaddafi's forces and his
accomplices will not stop resisting until Gaddafi is caught or killed,"
said Mustafa Abdel Jalil, head of the rebels' National Council, who offered
amnesty to any of his entourage who killed the fallen strongman and announced a
reward worth over $1 million for his capture.
"The end will only come
when he's captured, dead or alive," Abdel Jalil said in the eastern rebel
stronghold of Benghazi.
Until then, he said, Gaddafi
would not give up easily and could still unleash a "catastrophic
event." In a poor-quality audio tape broadcast by satellite overnight,
Gaddafi, 69, urged Libya's tribes to "exterminate traitors, infidels and rats."
There was no clear indication
of where Gaddafi is, though his opponents surmised he was still in or around
Tripoli after what Gaddafi himself described as a "tactical"
withdrawal from his Bab al-Aziziya compound before it was captured on Tuesday.
But Western leaders and the
rebel government-in-waiting lost no time readying a handover of Libya's
substantial foreign assets. Funds will be required to bring relief to
war-battered towns and to develop oil reserves that can make Libya rich.
Washington was to submit a
U.N. resolution to release an immediate $1.5 billion for humanitarian aid. More
will follow. While Libya is rich in oil, four decades of rule by personality
cult has left it with few institutions of normal governance.
"DELUSIONAL"
Abdel Salam Jalloud, a close
ally who switched sides last week, said Gaddafi planned to drop out of sight
and then launch a guerrilla war:
"He is sick with
power," he said. "He believes he can gather his supporters and carry
out attacks ... He is delusional. He thinks he can return to power."
But there were signs other
Gaddafi supporters are giving up on him, following a stream of defections
during the six months of the uprising. At Tripoli's Rixos hotel where loyalist
gunmen had been preventing nearly 40 foreigners, mostly journalists, from
leaving, gunmen relented on Wednesday and let them go.
After by far the bloodiest of
the Arab Spring revolts that are transforming the Middle East and North Africa,
there were clear indications, too, of new threats of disorder. Four Italian
journalists had been kidnapped near Zawiya, between Tripoli and the Tunisian
border.
Western officials also fear
weapons, including anti-aircraft missiles and nuclear material capable of
making a "dirty bomb," could be taken from Gaddafi's stocks and reach hostile groups.
Imposing order and preventing
rivalries breaking out across tribal, ethnic and ideological lines among the
disparate rebel factions are major concerns of both the new leaders and of
their Western backers, who are working to avoid the anarchy and bloodshed that
followed the overthrow of Iraq's Saddam Hussein.
Meeting rebel government chief
Mahmoud Jibril in Paris, French President Nicolas Sarkozy was the first Western
leader to bask in the gratitude of Gaddafi's opponents, who noted how Sarkozy
took a lead in pushing for NATO military intervention.
Paris, Sarkozy said, will host
a "Friends of Libya" summit next Thursday, September 1. It would
include Russia and China,
both critics of the Western bombing campaign which have been concerned at now
losing out on business deals with the rebels.
France,
Britain and the United States were working on a new United Nations resolution
to ease sanctions and asset freezes imposed on Libya when Gaddafi was in
charge. Rebels also spoke of bringing back workers to restart oil export
facilities soon.
GUNFIRE AND SHORTAGES
Fighters who swept in to
Tripoli at the weekend, uniting several fronts and a variety of opposition
groups, were trying to establish order in the city, but faced pockets of
resistance and there were signs of looting. Snipers kept up fire from high
buildings, including around Gaddafi's compound. Rebels blasted back with
anti-aircraft guns mounted on pickup trucks.
"There are still many
snipers in eastern Tripoli," said one rebel fighter. "We'll finish
them off but it'll take time."
Government buildings were
being stripped of anything of value. At the Bab al-Aziziyah complex, fighters
were still going through buildings and coming out with sniper rifles and
ammunition, which they distributed among their ranks.
Medical supplies, never
especially plentiful, were reaching critical levels in many places where some
of the hundreds of casualties from the recent fighting were being treated.
Shooting in the street also kept doctors away from work.
"There is a real
catastrophe here," said a rebel spokesman. Appeals were made in the
streets and mosques for urgent help. There is also a dangerous shortage of
blood at hospitals."
The rebels, many of whom were
once supporters of Gaddafi, stressed the wish to work with former loyalists and
officials and to avoid the purges of the ousted ruling elite which marked
Iraq's descent into sectarian anarchy after 2003.
Gaddafi's tribal home town of
Sirte, on the coast between Tripoli and Benghazi, was still not in the hands of
the new leadership who have despatched forces there. Nor was the southern city
of Sabha, where the rebels reported fighting.
But Gaddafi was already
history in the eyes of the rebels and their political leaders held high-level
talks in Qatar on Wednesday with envoys of the United States, Britain, France, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates on the
way ahead.
Another meeting was scheduled
for Thursday in Istanbul.
The fall of Gaddafi, with the
arresting images on Arab satellite TV of rebels stomping through his sanctum
and laying waste to the props of his power, could invigorate other revolts in
the Arab world, such as in Syria where President Bashar al-Assad has
launched bloody military crackdowns on protesters.
(Reporting by Peter Graff,
Ulf Laessing, Missy Ryan, Zohra Bensemra and Leon Malherbe in Tripoli, Robert Birsel in Benghazi, Hamid Ould Ahmed in
Algiers, Souhail Karam in Rabat, Richard
Valdmanis, Christian
Lowe and Giles Elgood in Tunis, Sami Aboudi, Dina Zayed and Tom Pfeifferin
Cairo, writing by Alastair Macdonald, editing by Peter Millership)
Source : Reuters
EmpireMoney
No comments:
Post a Comment