The US is sending $25 million in nonlethal aid to Libyan rebels to cover “vehicles, fuel trucks and fuel bladders, ambulances, medical equipment, protective vests, binoculars, and non-secure radios.”
A Tunisian court dropped charges against a police officer who incited protests in several Arab countries when she allegedly slapped a local fruit vendor who later set himself on fire in front of a governor’s office.
Foreign workers are desperately trying to flee the besieged Libyan city of Misrata—but they may be fleeing attacks by the rebels as well as Qaddafi’s forces. Qatar now acknowledges it is arming the rebel forces.
The Moroccan media are making much of a report in Italy’s Corriere della Sera that Western Sahara guerillas are fighting for Qaddafi—as well as claims from the Tripoli regime that they are fighting against Qaddafi!
Berber refugees from Libya’s remote Western Mountains report atrocities by Moammar Qaddafi’s forces, including the shelling of homes, poisoning wells with petrol, and threatening women with rape.
AlJazeera reports from a refugee camp in Tunisia, where African migrants who have fled Libya tell both of being expelled from the country by rebels—and being press-ganged into Qaddafi’s military.
As NATO warplanes again bombed their ostensible rebel allies in Libya, Gen. Carter Ham, head of US Africa Command, broached sending troops into Libya with a possible international ground force to back up the rebel army.
Reports are emerging of US and British military advisors arriving in Benghazi, as a Qaddafi spokesman said the regime is open to reform—but that “the leader has to lead this forward.”
Moammar Qaddafi’s regime rejected a rebel ceasefire offer, as reports emerged that NATO mistakenly bombed a rebel convoy near Brega, killing 13 including four civilian medical personnel.
Libya’s rebels, in retreat for a third consecutive day, appealed to Qaddafi for a ceasefire—as they announced the signing of a deal with Qatar to market oil from fields under their control in exchange for weapons.
Defected Libyan foreign minister Moussa Koussa may bear responsibility in the Lockerbie bombing—and in countless “disappearances” and rights abuses. Will he now be embraced as the technocratic face of a new regime?
The White House and Paris both publicly broached arming the Libyan rebels as Moammar Qaddafi’s forces pushed the insurgent army back in a sweep to the east—despite ongoing Allied air-strikes.
