Police clash with Gaddafi opponents in Tripoli as rebels close in on capital

Tripoli, Friday

Libyan police fired tear gas at protestors demonstrating against Muammar Gaddafi’s regime in Tripoli today as rebel fighters in eastern Libya tried to push the front line nearer to the capital.

Elsewhere the UN refugee agency voiced concern for those fleeing the violence and international measures against Gaddafi bore fruit with the seizure by Britain of a ship carrying a large quantity of Libyan currency.

Some 100 anti-Gaddafi demonstrators clashed with police in the Tajoura neighbourhood in eastern Tripoli after Friday prayers, a witness said, while another said opponents and supporters of the regime traded blows near the capital’s Green Square.

Police fired in the air and sealed off the area but did not intervene otherwise, the second witness said.

In the rebel-held east of the country renegade fighters were moving westward in haphazard armed convoys out of Uqayla, a desert hamlet about 280 kilometres from the main rebel headquarters in Benghazi, Libya’s second city.

Entrenched on high ground

An AFP reporter saw 60-70 well-armed rebels shouting that they were going to Raslanuf, where pro-Gaddafi forces are entrenched on high ground.

Later the sound of heavy shelling and machine-gun fire could be heard near Raslanuf, with rebels reporting that at least four were killed near an oil compound.

“The plan is to edge slowly, slowly towards them to pressure them to back off. We don’t want to fight, we want to pressure them psychologically,” Colonel Bashir Abdulkadir told AFP.

“But if we have to kill them to win this battle, we will,” he said. “We are a popular revolt,” the rebel commander said. “God will give us victory”.

Captain Shoaib al-Akaki, another defector from the military, said, “We’re trying to minimise losses on both sides.”

“We all have relatives in Sirte,” he said, referring to the coastal city between Benghazi and Tripoli where Gaddafi was born.

A patchwork coalition of rebels controls eastern Libya and some towns in the west following a revolt that started on February 15, but Gaddafi retains his grip on the capital.

In Misrata, a rebel-held pocket closer to Tripoli, one person was killed late Thursday amid heavy firing by pro-Gaddafi forces in a bid to recapture the town, a witness said.

Heavily armed pro-regime forces were also manning the Libyan side of the border with Tunisia, and fewer than 2,000 people crossed the frontier on Thursday, compared with between 10,000 and 15,000 on previous days, the UN refugee agency said Friday.

“UNHCR is very concerned that the security situation in Libya may be preventing people crossing the border,” spokeswoman Melissa Fleming said in Geneva.

Those who did manage to cross told the UNHCR that “their mobile phones had been confiscated en route, along with cameras,” she said, adding, “Many of those who have crossed the border appear to be frightened and are unwilling to speak.”

“We’re hearing reports... that the entire road was full of Gaddafi-supported military, that there were checkpoints all along the way,” she said.

Four refugees who had just crossed the border Friday told AFP however that they had not witnessed any military presence and there were only police.

With the help of the international community aid agencies have been able to ease congestion at the Tunisian side of the frontier, but another 12,500 people, most of them Bangladeshis, still needed evacuation, Fleming said.

More than 640 Bangladeshis were taken by road Thursday from Benghazi to the border with Egypt by the International Organization for Migration.

Would be evacuated

Another 300 migrants, including 40 sub-Saharan Africans, would be evacuated from Benghazi in the same manner on Friday. Aid agencies have raised concerns about the plight of migrants from poorer countries, as their home countries may not have resources to evacuate them.

As a senior EU official said the European Union could deploy warships off Libya to enforce an arms embargo on the north African country, British authorities said a border control cutter had intercepted a ship carrying some $160 million of Libyan currency.

The UN Security Council last Saturday unanimously ordered a travel and assets ban on Gaddafi’s regime.

The United States and Britain have also evoked the possibility of imposing a no-fly zone over Libya. Several governments, including France, insist that such an operation would require a UN mandate. Russia, a veto-wielding member of the Security Council, has voiced deep reservations about it.

In other regional hotspots, Yemeni troops killed four demonstrators and wounded seven on Friday when they fired on an anti-regime rally in the north, officials and Shiite rebels said, as protests raged across the country.

In Iraq thousands of protesters massed in cities and towns across the country for rallies against corruption, unemployment and poor public services. But the demonstrations were markedly smaller than those which took place a week ago.

In Bahrain, police intervened to disperse young Sunnis and Shiites who clashed late Thursday in Hamad Town, south of the capital Manama, police said.

Thousands of Jordanians also demonstrated on Friday in Amman to demand “regime reforms,” a day after Prime Minister Maaruf Bakhit rejected calls for a constitutional monarchy in Jordan.

In Egypt, new Prime Minister Essam Sharaf vowed to respond to demands for democratic change as he was warmly welcomed by thousands of protesters in Cairo’s Tahrir Square a day after his appointment.

Shortly afterwards a military source said a popular referendum on constitutional changes had been set for March 19. (AFP)