Libya says ex-deputy PM suspect in General's Abdel Fattah Younes killing

Mahmud Jibril (L) and Ali al-Essawi (R) of Libya's rebel national council, two envoys from Libya's opposition, answer to journalists at the end of their meeting with France's president Nicolas Sarkozy (who recognized NTC) at the Elysee presidential Palace in Paris. (23/2/2011)

Πηγή: Reuters
By Ali Shuaib
Nov 28 2011

TRIPOLI Nov 28 (Reuters) - Libya's National Transitional Council (NTC) said on Monday a former NTC deputy prime minister was suspected of involvement in the killing of one of the rebel movement's most senior military commanders.

General Abdel Fattah Younes was killed by his own side in July, an incident that caused deep rifts inside the rebellion against Muammar Gaddafi's rule. The naming of the suspects risks reviving those divisions.

At a news conference broadcast on Libyan television, NTC chief military prosecutor Yussef Al-Aseifr named Ali El-Essawi as chief suspect. Essawi served as the NTC's interim deputy prime minister until he stepped down earlier this year.

"The number one suspect in the investigation is the former deputy head of (the NTC) executive office Ali Abdelaziz Saad Al-Essawi," Aseifr said.

"There are seven people suspected of involvement in Abdel Fattah Younes's killing. Three have been arrested and security forces are looking for the others," said Aseifr, who was standing alongside NTC chief Mustafa Abdel Jalil.

Essawi denied involvement in a phone call to the local Libya Awalen television station. "I never signed any decision relating to Abdel Fattah Younes," he said. "Everybody in Libya wants the truth."

Before he was made deputy prime minister, Essawi had acted as the NTC's de facto foreign minister and toured foreign capitals rallying support for the rebellion before Gaddafi was forced from power in August.

Younes was for years part of Gaddafi's inner circle. He defected at the start of the uprising against Gaddafi's rule in February and became the military chief of the rebellion.

The circumstances of his killing remain murky, but it is known that he was killed after NTC leaders summoned him back from the front line to Benghazi, the eastern city where at the time the council had its headquarters.

His death exposed splits within the anti-Gaddafi movement, especially between Islamists and secularists, with different factions accusing each other of involvement.

How al-Qaeda got to rule in Tripoli

Πηγή: The Asia Times
By Pepe Escobar
Aug 30, 2011

His name is Abdelhakim Belhaj. Some in the Middle East might have, but few in the West and across the world would have heard of him.

Time to catch up. Because the story of how an al-Qaeda asset turned out to be the top Libyan military commander in still war-torn Tripoli is bound to shatter - once again - that wilderness of mirrors that is the "war on terror", as well as deeply compromising the carefully constructed propaganda of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's (NATO's) "humanitarian" intervention in Libya.

Muammar Gaddafi's fortress of Bab-al-Aziziyah was essentially invaded and conquered last week by Belhaj's men - who were at the forefront of a militia of Berbers from the mountains southwest of Tripoli. The militia is the so-called Tripoli Brigade, trained in secret for two months by US Special Forces. This turned out to be the rebels' most effective militia in six months of tribal/civil war.
Already last Tuesday, Belhaj was gloating on how the battle was won, with Gaddafi forces escaping "like rats" (note that's the same metaphor used by Gaddafi himself to designate the rebels).

Abdelhakim Belhaj, aka Abu Abdallah al-Sadek, is a Libyan jihadi. Born in May 1966, he honed his skills with the mujahideen in the 1980s anti-Soviet jihad in Afghanistan.

He's the founder of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) and its de facto emir - with Khaled Chrif and Sami Saadi as his deputies. After the Taliban took power in Kabul in 1996, the LIFG kept two training camps in Afghanistan; one of them, 30 kilometers north of Kabul - run by Abu Yahya - was strictly for al-Qaeda-linked jihadis.

After 9/11, Belhaj moved to Pakistan and also to Iraq, where he befriended none other than ultra-nasty Abu Musab al-Zarqawi - all this before al-Qaeda in Iraq pledged its allegiance to Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri and turbo-charged its gruesome practices.

In Iraq, Libyans happened to be the largest foreign Sunni jihadi contingent, only losing to the Saudis. Moreover, Libyan jihadis have always been superstars in the top echelons of "historic" al-Qaeda - from Abu Faraj al-Libi (military commander until his arrest in 2005, now lingering as one of 16 high-value detainees in the US detention center at Guantanamo) to Abu al-Laith al-Libi (another military commander, killed in Pakistan in early 2008).

Time for an extraordinary rendition 

The LIFG had been on the US Central Intelligence Agency's radars since 9/11. In 2003, Belhaj was finally arrested in Malaysia - and then transferred, extraordinary rendition-style, to a secret Bangkok prison, and duly tortured.

In 2004, the Americans decided to send him as a gift to Libyan intelligence - until he was freed by the Gaddafi regime in March 2010, along with other 211 "terrorists", in a public relations coup advertised with great fanfare.

The orchestrator was no less than Saif Islam al-Gaddafi - the modernizing/London School of Economics face of the regime. LIFG's leaders - Belhaj and his deputies Chrif and Saadi - issued a 417-page confession dubbed "corrective studies" in which they declared the jihad against Gaddafi over (and illegal), before they were finally set free.

A fascinating account of the whole process can be seen in a report called "Combating Terrorism in Libya through Dialogue and Reintegration". [1] Note that the authors, Singapore-based terrorism "experts" who were wined and dined by the regime, express the "deepest appreciation to Saif al-Islam Gaddafi and the Gaddafi International Charity and Development Foundation for making this visit possible".

Crucially, still in 2007, then al-Qaeda's number two, Zawahiri, officially announced the merger between the LIFG and al-Qaeda in the Islamic Mahgreb (AQIM). So, for all practical purposes, since then, LIFG/AQIM have been one and the same - and Belhaj was/is its emir.

In 2007, LIFG was calling for a jihad against Gaddafi but also against the US and assorted Western "infidels".

Fast forward to last February when, a free man, Belhaj decided to go back into jihad mode and align his forces with the engineered uprising in Cyrenaica.

Every intelligence agency in the US, Europe and the Arab world knows where he's coming from. He's already made sure in Libya that himself and his militia will only settle for sharia law.

There's nothing "pro-democracy" about it - by any stretch of the imagination. And yet such an asset could not be dropped from NATO's war just because he was not very fond of "infidels".

The late July killing of rebel military commander General Abdel Fattah Younis - by the rebels themselves - seems to point to Belhaj or at least people very close to him.

It's essential to know that Younis - before he defected from the regime - had been in charge of Libya's special forces fiercely fighting the LIFG in Cyrenaica from 1990 to 1995.

The Transitional National Council (TNC), according to one of its members, Ali Tarhouni, has been spinning Younis was killed by a shady brigade known as Obaida ibn Jarrah (one of the Prophet Mohammed's companions). Yet the brigade now seems to have dissolved into thin air.

Shut up or I'll cut your head off 

Hardly by accident, all the top military rebel commanders are LIFG, from Belhaj in Tripoli to one Ismael as-Salabi in Benghazi and one Abdelhakim al-Assadi in Derna, not to mention a key asset, Ali Salabi, sitting at the core of the TNC. It was Salabi who negotiated with Saif al-Islam Gaddafi the "end" of LIFG's jihad, thus assuring the bright future of these born-again "freedom fighters".

It doesn't require a crystal ball to picture the consequences of LIFG/AQIM - having conquered military power and being among the war "winners" - not remotely interested in relinquishing control just to please NATO's whims.

Meanwhile, amid the fog of war, it's unclear whether Gaddafi is planning to trap the Tripoli brigade in urban warfare; or to force the bulk of rebel militias to enter the huge Warfallah tribal areas.

Gaddafi's wife belongs to the Warfallah, Libya's largest tribe, with up to 1 million people and 54 sub-tribes. The inside word in Brussels is that NATO expects Gaddafi to fight for months if not years; thus the Texas George W Bush-style bounty on his head and the desperate return to NATO's plan A, which was always to take him out.

Libya may now be facing the specter of a twin-headed guerrilla Hydra; Gaddafi forces against a weak TNC central government and NATO boots on the ground; and the LIFG/AQIM nebula in a jihad against NATO (if they are sidelined from power).

Gaddafi may be a dictatorial relic of the past, but you don't monopolize power for four decades for nothing, and without your intelligence services learning a thing or two.

From the beginning, Gaddafi said this was a foreign-backed/al-Qaeda operation; he was right (although he forgot to say this was above all neo-Napoleonic French President Nicolas Sarkozy's war, but that's another story).

He also said this was a prelude for a foreign occupation whose target was to privatize and take over Libya's natural resources. He may - again – turn out to be right.

The Singapore "experts" who praised the Gaddafi regime's decision to free the LIFG's jihadis qualified it as "a necessary strategy to mitigate the threat posed to Libya".

Now, LIFG/AQIM is finally poised to exercise its options as an "indigenous political force".

Ten years after 9/11, it's hard not to imagine a certain decomposed skull in the bottom of the Arabian Sea boldly grinning to kingdom come.

Note
1. Click here

Libya: tribe pledges to arrest rebels it believes were behind murder of opposition military commander

Abdel Fatah Younis meets his troops during fighting outside Brega Photo: HEATHCLIFF O'MALLEY

Πηγή: The Telegraph
By Rob Crilly

26 Aug 2011

One of eastern Libya’s most powerful tribes has said it is prepared to detain and try senior rebel leaders it believes were behind the murder of the opposition’s top military commander.

The move is in a sign of the tribal tensions that could undermine attempts to form a new government.

Abdel Fatah Younis was assassinated on July 28 after being summoned to the rebel stronghold of Benghazi for questioning.

Members of his Obeidi tribe are unhappy at the way the rebel’s National Transitional Council (NTC) has investigated his murder, amid allegations that senior opposition figures ordered the killing.

The spectre of splits and tribal tension has haunted the six-month old rebellion and could now damage attempts to unite the country.

Diplomats in Benghazi say the issue – centred on the death of one of the revolution’s most charismatic and controversial figures – will spark a crisis as the NTC tries to maintain unity and build a new government based on the rule of law.

Yesterday (FRI), Mohammed Hamad Younis, a nephew of the former interior minister and a spokesman for the Obeidi tribe, said elders has decided to name the men they believed responsible.

“If the NTC does not show it can administer justice then we will take charge,” he told The Daily Telegraph. “It will be done carefully and by tribal law, but we will capture them and take care of them ourselves.”

Younis was not short of enemies. He served as Colonel Gaddafi’s interior minister and had been responsible for brutal suppression of Islamist militias during the 1980s.

He defected to the opposition early in the uprising becoming its military leader.

He was murdered after being called for questioning by rebel fighters armed witt a detention order, signed by a judge and by Ali al-Essawi, the vice chairman of the rebels’ cabinet-in-waiting, according to his relatives

Initially, NTC figures blamed Gaddafi sympathisers for his murder in rebel custody.

However, their story has changed several times and suspicion now centres on Islamist militias among the opposition army unhappy at General Younis’s attempts to reduce their influence.

“We did not want to act before the fall of Tripoli,” said his nephew. “But we are not the ones harming the revolution. It is corrupt figures in the NTC who have betrayed the values of the revolution.”

On Thursday, Mustafa Abdel Jalil, head of the NTC, insisted the investigation was on course.

“They have reached a final conclusion and the identities of those who assassinated Younis have started appearing,” he said.

“They will be arrested at a time when the higher interests of this revolution will not be damaged.”

However, his words have only increased speculation that the murder was orchestrated by senior rebel figures.

The issue highlights the power still wielded by tribal elders in Libya and the way in which the opposition will have to balance clan interests as they build a new government.

During his reign, Colonel Gaddafi weakened state institutions which he believed might undermine his power.

As a result, analysts say Libya’s 140 or so tribes were able to maintain influence by filling the political and social vacuum left behind.

“The prospect of increased friction or violent conflict between the country’s tribes, clans and ethnic groups – specifically between the Arabs and Berbers – remains a serious source of concern,” said Anthony

Skinner, Middle East analyst at political risk consultancy Maplecroft.

“The general absence of formal structures through which to govern poses another challenge.”

Why Did Pakistan's Spy Chief Make a Secret Trip to China?

Πηγή: Time

By Ishaan Tharoor 

Wednesday, August 3, 2011 at 2:24 am

Reports reveal Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha, head of Pakistan's main military intelligence agency, the ISI, flew on a secret mission to Beijing for urgent talks this Monday. The visit followed swiftly on the heels of yet another round of diplomatic squabbling between Washington and Islamabad. During a heated summer of disputes, tensions between the ISI and the CIA flared most recently over the alleged Pakistani harassment of American officials stationed in the country. Pasha's China trip has been interpreted by some as a tacit act of defiance—a reminder to his American counterparts that the Pakistanis can always look east to their “all-weather” friend across the Himalayas rather than bend the knee to the will of the U.S.

But it also may be a sign of China's growing disquiet with Pakistan. Another top-ranking Pakistani military officer, Lt. Gen Wahid Arshad, had already conducted a considerable tour of China just weeks ago in a bid to improve ties. A few analysts have suggested that Pasha's trip — couched in vague terms about building a “broad-based strategic dialogue” — may have been less a visit and more of a summons. After all, China claimed this week that Islamist militants trained in Pakistan were behind a violent attack in the far western city of Kashgar that killed at least 14 and injured dozens more. Like the U.S., perhaps the Chinese are now also frustrated at the dangers Pakistan has long let take root on its soil.

The latest Pakistani-U.S. spat centered over reports of Islamabad's alleged monitoring and obstructing of CIA activities in the country, which, writes TIME's Omar Waraich, included midnight searches, “tip-offs to local media about the movements of U.S. officials and lurid tales planted in the local press of diplomats conspiring with Pakistani politicians.” ISI and Pakistani anger over the Raymond Davis affair — which we discuss hereand here — in part motivated the ongoing feuding with the CIA. Waraich reports:

The restrictions imposed by the Pakistani foreign office at the behest of the ISI appear to be just one element of a broader effort since the Davis affair by spy chief Lieut. General Ahmed Shuja Pasha to make his agency aware of exactly what every American official in Pakistan is working on, a U.S. official tells TIME on condition of anonymity. The Pakistani spymaster's alarm was further heightened when reports emerged that the CIA had recruited Pakistani citizens to help spy on bin Laden's hiding place in Abbottabad. The alleged harassment of U.S. personnel would clearly limit the Americans' ability to gather intelligence in Pakistan independently of the Pakistani authorities.

"The U.S.-Pakistani relationship is complicated," a U.S. official tells TIME on condition of anonymity. "It ebbs and flows, and it's driven most of all by what is or isn't accomplished on the ground. There have been recent incidents where U.S. embassy officials have been harassed by Pakistani authorities, which is a disturbing trend. The visas the Pakistanis have agreed to give U.S. embassy officials are short-term and single-entry — not the type traditionally afforded to diplomatic representatives in the country. This is a far from ideal solution."

Of course, few know what the ideal solution would be for a relationship that sets so many eyebrows furrowing and hands wringing. But lurking ever on the sidelines of the fraught U.S.-Pakistani alliance is China, a country whose prestige in Pakistan still seems greater than its actual presence. For years, Beijing has cultivated military ties with Pakistan specifically as a counterweight to India, the only other nation in the region that presents a real geo-political challenge to the Chinese. As I (and others) have reported before, the Sino-Pakistani relationship is a marriage of convenience and, while cloaked in lofty rhetoric of neighborly fraternity, is far less substantial than the bilateral ties either nation has separately with the U.S. (But, if you read this typically delusional Aug. 3 editorial in a leading Pakistani daily, you could be fooled to think the opposite.)

In reality, it's still unclear what leverage against the U.S. Pakistan can genuinely gain by playing the China card. Beijing's tendency to conduct its diplomacy quietly and out of view deepens the mystery, but it also obscures what may be a rather tetchy moment between the two neighbors. As one Hong Kong-based commentator suggests to Reuters, China may be discovering how tricky (and maddening) it is to get the Pakistani military to cooperate on counter-terrorism.

Chinese officials claimed the attacks in Kashgar were authored by the shadowy East Turkestan Islamic Movement, a jihadist organization of mostly ethnic Uighurs, a Turkic Muslim minority that comprises the majority in the far-western Chinese region of Xinjiang. China routinely invokes the specter of the terrorist threat when cracking down on dissent in the restive region. Yet disturbances there tend to be triggered more often by social discontent — many Uighurs chafe at state policies they deem discriminatory and marginalizing — than militant connivance. Pasha's presence in Beijing may mark Beijing's continued efforts to root out Uighur dissidents and sympathizers beyond China's borders, as it has already done in Kazakhstan.

If ETIM did find succor in Pakistan — like myriad other jihadi groups in South and Central Asia — the great irony is that they have little support among the Pakistani populace. The plight of Uighurs, unlike that of other Muslim minorities like the Chechens in Russia or Kashmiris in India, has little resonance among the Pakistani public, which is widely admiring of China and its policies. That's an affection the U.S. certainly does not garner, and which could start to wane should Beijing start adopting the same tough-love approach Washington has in recent months.

Can US Libya strategy survive the assassination of rebels' top general?

Libyans shout slogans at the rally outside the Tibesti hotel in the rebel-held Benghazi, Libya, Sunday, July 31. The rally was held to pay respect to Libyan rebels' slain top general Abdel Fateh Younis.

Sergey Ponomarev/AP

Πηγή: CSM

By Howard LaFranchi 

August 2, 2011

The assassination of Gen. Younis is a major challenge to the rebels – and to the strategy of the US and others who recognized the rebels as Libya's government and must stay the course.

The intrigue and unanswered questions that continue to swirl around the assassination last Thursday of the Libyan rebels’ top general are raising questions about the control the rebels have over their own movement.

At the same time, the rebels’ turmoil casts fresh doubt in some eyes on the wisdom of the United States,Britain, France, and more than two dozen other countries, who officially recognized the rebel governing body, the Transitional National Council (TNC), as Libya’s legitimate government.

The assassination of the chief of staff of the TNC’s armed forces, Gen. Abdel Fateh Younis, was just as murky Tuesday as when it happened. Rumors are proliferating as to whether the killing came at the hands of rebels suspicious of General Younis’s loyalties, disgruntled tribesmen, or a cell of loyalists to Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi tasked with taking out the former Qaddafi confidant.

One theory postulates that the killers received orders embedded in reports on Libya state television in Tripoli.

About the only undisputed point is that the Younis assassination reveals the tenuous control the TNC maintains over its forces, as well as over events in its capital of Benghazi on Libya’s eastern edge.

Yet as true as that may be, the international community has little choice but to stick with the path it’s chosen and continue to work with the rebel government, some regional experts say.

“This is a major challenge for the TNC, and the Libyan rebels are going to have to prove to the wider world that they are more than the collection of their fractured and fragmented parts,” says Robert Danin, a Middle East specialist at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) in Washington.

Still, he says, the US and other members of the international community have little choice now but to stand by the TNC in its war with Mr. Qaddafi. The West in particular settled on “regime change" in Libya, Mr. Danin says, a decision that does not allow for easy backtracking.

“Once the [Obama] administration and NATO decided that their objective was not just humanitarian support but clearly to try to topple Qaddafi, then you’re in a different world,” says Danin, a former National Security Council adviser for the Near East and North Africa during the Bush administration.

Indeed, the Younis crisis did not dissuade France’s foreign minister, Alain Juppé, from releasing more than $250 million in frozen assets to the TNC’s envoy to Paris Monday. The TNC has committed to using the funds for humanitarian and other nonlethal purposes.
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Mr. Juppé also informed the TNC envoy, Mansour Seif al-Nasr, that as the representative of the Libyan government France now recognizes, he is free to set up shop in the Libyan Embassy in Paris.

After months of complaining that it was about to go broke, the TNC is now raking in hundreds of millions of dollars in unfrozen Libyan assets. Just last week, Britain announced its official recognition of the TNC as Libya’s sole legitimate government and the release of some $150 million in assets.

The US in February froze some $30 billion in Libyan assets, and is now working on legislation to free up at least part of that sum to provide to the TNC for humanitarian assistance.

Some experts are cautioning that a young and divided opposition government like the TNC can hardly be expected to know how to effectively and efficiently use the hundreds of millions and potentially billions of dollars falling into its hands.

A panel of experts assembled last week by the Center for Strategic and International Studies inWashington concluded that too much money for the TNC could end up being as big a problem as too little. “The paucity of cash in eastern Libya has helped nurture a culture of volunteerism and broad public engagement,” the group said. “Too much cash at the center will likely lead to centralization and patronage.”

In what could hardly have been music to NATO’s ears, the 50 government and think-tank experts also concluded that while “change” will come to Libya in the form of Qaddafi’s departure from power, it could take as long as two to three years for that to happen. (NATO’s last public estimate several weeks ago was that Qaddafi would be out before October.)

The CFR’s Danin says the prospects for a drawn-out war to oust Qaddafi, coupled with the lack of standing institutions that a new government like the TNC will be able to count on, means the international community is engaged in Libya for some time to come.

“All the problems we’re seeing now are further reminder that even when Qaddafi goes, we won’t be able to just pick up and leave,” he says. “To some extent, the international community has committed to nation-building in Libya.”

And while the approach President Obama has taken means the US is less engaged than the British and French, Danin says the US will still be on the hook once Qaddafi goes.

“No one should have the illusion that we [the US] aren’t in this,” he say. “We are.”

Libyan rebels under increasing strain after attack on 'renegades' in Benghazi

Libyan special emergency police officers and local militia guard the hangar where the fighting between rebel forces and suspected pro-Gaddafi fighters in Benghazi took place. Photograph: Sergey Ponomarev/AP

Πηγή: The Guardian
By Chris Stephen in Misrata and Nicholas Watt

31 July 2011, 19.57 BST

Divisions deepen over killing of Abdul Fatah Younis, while forces elsewhere report gains in Misrata and Nafusa mountains.

 Fears of a fracturing of Libya's opposition heightened after units loyal to the ruling National Transitional Council stormed the base of what it said was a renegade unit in the rebel capital, Benghazi.

Four fighters were killed and six wounded in the attack on the al-Nidaa Brigade, blamed for Thursday's assassination of army commander Abdel Fatah Younis.

NTC spokesman Mahmoud Shammam said the attack was ordered two days after the brigade, which officials claim is Islamist, attacked two Benghazi jails, freeing more than 200 inmates. "We consider them members of the fifth column,."

One unverified rumour in Benghazi is that the al-Nidaa brigade received secret coded orders communicated through an announcer, Yusef Shakir, on Muammar Gaddafi's state television. Three state TV transmitters were bombed by Nato on Saturday night. Gaddafi's regime claimed three journalists were killed and a further 15 people wounded.

"We're not a military target," said government spokesman Khalid Bazelya. "We are not commanders in the army, and we do not pose a threat to civilians."

However, in London the Ministry of Defence defended the attack on the transmitters. A spokesman said: "This strike was an attempt to disrupt the broadcast of Gaddafi's murderous rhetoric, which has repeatedly sought to incite violence against fellow Libyans."

Outwardly, foreign backers of the rebels insist the NTC is sound, with French defence minister Gerard Longuet saying Paris was not pushing for an immediate resolution: "Impatience is never a good adviser." He insisted an end to the conflict rested with the people of the Libyan capital: "Things have to move in Tripoli. To put it clearly, the population has to rise up."

Nerves remain frayed in Benghazi and questions remain over the role, if any, of NTC officials in the death of Younis, following an admission that he had been arrested for questioning on treason allegations just hours before his death.

In London, the defence secretary, Liam Fox, would not be drawn on the assassination. "It's not yet clear who carried out the killing, and there are claims and counter-claims," he said. "It will be at least several days until we know exactly what the situation was. There has always been a mixture of people who make up the opposition forces – hardly surprising given the country's history – and it would be for the Libyans themselves to sort out exactly how any power structure develops post-Gaddafi."

Sir Menzies Campbell, former leader of the Liberal Democrats, said the killing raised questions about the stability of the NTC and demonstrated the need for a "wholesale" review of policy. He told Sky News: "The assassination has thrown into fairly sharp focus the whole question of the Transitional National Council. What kind of government [it would be], for example, [if] it ever got to Tripoli.

"I also think that claims of success have always got to be taken with a certain amount of scepticism because it's not about just taking ground temporarily, its taking it permanently. I've been saying I think we should take this period for a wholesale examination of policy.

"I supported the military action – I continue to support the British government's involvement – but I think we have to have a pretty clearer view about what the NTC would be like were they ever to get to Tripoli."

In stark contrast to the uncertainty in Benghazi, rebel forces in both Misrata and the Nafusa mountains reported significant breakthroughs against government forces.

West of the besieged city of Misrata, rebel units aided by intensive Nato bombing broke through the frontline in several places, advanced nine miles and captured abandoned tanks, artillery and truck-mounted grad rocket launchers near the town of Zlitan.

Four of the huge 155mm guns were seen by the Guardian being hauled by trucks from the frontline late on Saturday night. Fierce fighting for Zlitan continued on Sunday, bringing the death toll of rebel fighters over the weekend to 23, with more than 100 wounded and three civilians killed in shelling of Misrata city.

Rebel commanders claim that government forces appear to be disintegrating in many sectors."The resistance today was not that much. I don't know, maybe he doesn't have an army," said Mohammed Elfituri of the Faisal (Sword) Brigade. "We thought that it would be hard work [but] we moved 15 kilometres." Similar gains were reported by rebel units pushing north from bases in the Nafusa mountains, who say they have captured one town, Hawamid, and surrounded a second, Tiji, 150 miles south west of Tripoli.