Rebels accuse Gaddafi of playing dirty tricks in besieged Libya city

Misrata, Sunday

Libyan rebels accused Muammar Gaddafi of playing dirty games in Misrata where salvos of Grad rockets exploded today in apparent contradiction of his regime’s vow to halt fire in the western city.

In a Misrata hospital, meanwhile, two captured pro-Gaddafi soldiers told AFP 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 Gaddafi regime to fight insurgents in the country’s third city.

“Gaddafi 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 spoke to AFP separately from their hospital rooms in the presence of a doctor, saying officers had abandoned the troops and their supply lines were cut.

Peaceful solution

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“The armed forces have not withdrawn from Misrata.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 Gaddafi 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. “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 Gaddafi loyalists.

Six people were killed and 34 wounded in Sunday’s fighting, said Doctor Khalid Abu Falra at Misrata’s main private clinic.

Misrata suffered its heaviest toll in 65 days of fighting on Saturday, with 28 dead and 100 wounded compared with a daily average of 11 killed, according to Falra.

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 Gaddafi 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.

On Sunday, US Senator John McCain, who visited the rebel stronghold of Benghazi last week, urged Washington to increase its air strikes on Libya, warning a prolonged stalemate would likely draw al-Qaeda into the conflict.

“The longer we delay, the more likely it is there is a stalemate. And if you’re worried about al-Qaeda entering into this fight, nothing would bring al-Qaeda in more rapidly and more dangerously than a stalemate,” McCain told NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

Gaddafi’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.

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. (AFP)