Saturday, April 2, 2011

The rebels are not offering peace. If you are making impossible demands, it's a trick, it's a trick.

I offer you peace, get out of Benghazi on a ship, this is my condition 

Quick recap: - Reports say forces loyal to Gaddafi have attacked the rebel-held town of Misurata. A rebel spokesman told the AFP news agency Gaddafi's forces attacked Misurata on Friday night with tank and rocket fire. - State television says military and civilian areas east and south-west of the capital Tripoli came under fire, by what it calls western assailants, crusaders and colonialists.  In the east, Brega remains the frontline, but the battle appears largely deadlocked. - The Transitional National council said it was ready for a truce if forces loyal to Gaddafi withdrew from several key towns. But a government spokesman said the ceasefire offer was a trick:
The rebels never offered any peace.....we are the ones who offered peace weeks ago, and we said we are going to talk, and let's sit down and everything. The rebels are not offering peace. If you are making impossible demands, it's a trick, it's a trick. So, okay, I could come to the rebels and say: 'rebels, I offer you peace, get out of Benghazi on a ship, this is my condition.' You can't do that. These are our cities, these are the cities of the Libyan government. You hate this government? You can hate it. Many people hate their governments.
  • 12:54pm
    Three Swedish fighter jets headed to Sardinia en route to taking part in NATO operations against the regime of Gaddafi, a military spokesman said. The three JAS Gripen warplanes, of a total nine aircraft pledged by Sweden, took off from the Ronneby base on Sweden's southern coast, army spokesman Rickard Wissman told AFP.Another five Gripens and a C-130 Hercules usable for mid-air refueling were to leave early Sunday, he said. The deployment, decided Tuesday by the Swedish government, won parliamentary approval on Friday.
  • 11:20am
    Check out this chilling footage coming from a pro-rebel YouTube channel. According to the website it shows a doctor lying on the ground injured and whom Gaddafi soldiers demand to repeat: "Long Live the Fatah, Long live Gaddafi." But the man answers instead: "Allah Akbar, Al Hamdillilah." A round of bullets is being fired and then the body of the same man is seen thrown at the back of a pick-up truck surrounded by some soldiers. Al Jazeera cannot verify the authenticity of the video. This video posted on Facebook shows rebels celebrating after one of Gaddafi's tanks was destroyed in the streets of Misurata.
  • 9:58am
    Al Jazeera's correspondent reports that 13 Libyan rebels were killed and seven others were injured when NATO aircraft bombed four cars of rebels west of the city of Ajdabiya. The Libyan government says the air strikes killed six people and wounded 12 others.
  • 9:30am
    Al Jazeera's Laurence Lee, reporting from Benghazi, says his team was told that Gaddafi's forces have stopped using tanks, because they can be easily spotted by NATO airplanes.
    Instead they are using pick-up trucks with mortars on the back which look a lot more like the rebel forces.
    Both sides now are basically mired in this stretch about 200km wide on the southeast tip of the Gulf of Sirt and that situation - it seems increasingly - can't change [...] So they have - despite all the bluster and the bravado - to find some sort of accommodation [...] Something's got to give.
  • 8:34am
    The German foreign minister Guido Westerwelle says the situation in Libya demands a political resolution, the Associated Press news agency reports.