Roadside graves found in Tripoli

11 September 2011 Last updated at 18:06 GMT It is not known who the victims are or who killed them The corpses of up to 20 people have been found in two roadside graves on the outskirts of Tripoli.

Forensic experts are investigating the deaths, thought to have occurred last month.

The graves are located just off the 11th June highway, in the Souk al-Jumua area to the east of the capital.

Separately, the charred remains of two bodies were uncovered on airport road in Tripoli.

The corpses were found near the oil tanks of a site known as the Hadba Project, a witness has told the BBC. Local residents in the area said the men were killed on the 22 August.

Libyan rebels captured Tripoli about three weeks ago. Areas of pro-Gaddafi resistance to the rebels remain, notably in Sirte and Bani Walid.

Anti-Gaddafi forces have resumed their attack on Bani Walid, supported by Nato air strikes. Rebel officials says their forces are now within reach of the centre of the town.

The whereabouts of Col Gaddafi and several of his sons remain unknown, though some of his family have fled to Algeria.

Several convoys of former Gaddafi loyalists are also said to have recently streamed over Libya's southern border with Niger.

Grave sites

Local people said there were around 15 bodies buried at one grave site.

Continue reading the main story Peter Biles BBC News, Tripoli

A mechanical digger was brought in to clear the area initially, then workers with picks and shovels set to work. Many wore surgical masks and gowns.

We saw mobile phone video from a local man who said it showed people in the neighbourhood burying the bodies because of the smell. The smell today was extreme as the bodies were exhumed.

The four bodies at the site down the road had been exhumed and placed in plastic body bags. Locals said one site contained approximately 15 bodies - one Libyan, and others African mercenaries.

It is not clear who killed them or how they died.

They were said to be mostly the remains of African mercenaries who had been fighting for Col Gaddafi.

A few hundred metres away, at a separate site, another four bodies had already been dug up.

Daily, the search goes on for thousands of Libyans still unaccounted for as a result of the conflict, says the BBC's Peter Biles in Tripoli.

But speaking in Tripoli this weekend the head of the National Transitional Council, Mustafa Abdul Jalil, said this was not the time for retribution.

On Saturday, Mr Jalil was greeted by hundreds of cheering, flag-waving supporters when he arrived in the capital for the first time since rebels took over the city.

Until now he had remained in the eastern city of Benghazi. His presence in the capital is aimed at sending a message about his authority.

Correspondents say he now faces big challenges as he tries to stabilise the country and form an effective national administration.

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Libya's rebel government moving to Tripoli to head off power vacuum (The Christian Science Monitor)

Benghazi, Libya – Libya's rebel leaders are moving to establish political control in Tripoli in anticipation of Muammar Qaddafi's fall, seeking to prevent a power vacuum and establish themselves as the sovereign government of a new Libya.

“We have to be there at the moment of liberation,” says Joma Sayehi Eltayef, who has been coordinating preparations for securing Tripoli from the eastern city of Benghazi. “We can’t leave any opportunities for remnants of the regime, or a vacuum. We need a strong grip so that we don’t have chaos. As soon as the regime falls, we have an alternative ready to take over.”

IN PICTURES: Qaddafi through the years

The move poses a major test of the leadership's coordination as it prepares to expand its responsibility from the rebel-controlled east to the entire nation, and make the transition from the battlefield to the task of running a vast, oil-rich country.

Rebel leaders flying to Tripoli todayAfter rebels' swift takeover of the capital on Sunday night, Qaddafi loyalists began fighting back intensely today, indicating that the push to take the capital may yet be a bloody and drawn-out battle. The rebels' National Transition Council, as well as local councils under its umbrella, is now activating plans it has been preparing for months.

The NTC is sending government ministers to Tripoli today to begin coordinating executive control as well as security, and aims to implement its transition plan as soon as possible.

Mr. Eltayef, a Tripoli native from a prominent family and leader of the local Tripoli council, says he will try to fly to the capital today. Once there, he plans to activate what he calls an extensive network of Tripoli residents he has been preparing over the past few months to secure the capital once rebel fighters took control.

He plans to ensure the security of the capital by deploying his network to man checkpoints, secure government buildings, commercial centers, bakeries, and streets, and allow civil services to continue, he says.

The hundreds of people he has cultivated over recent months, first in person and then via satellite phone after he fled to Benghazi early in the uprising, have already begun to step into their roles as their neighborhoods have been freed. When Qaddafi falls, they will be in full force, he says.

“This is of course in harmony with what the NTC is doing, under the National Transitional Council umbrella,” says Eltayef, whose brother is an NTC minister.

Credibility concerns in BenghaziYet even as the council begins to extend its reach to the capital, it is facing doubts in Benghazi. Initial reports that rebels captured two of Qaddafi’s sons fell apart when one was reported to have escaped and the other appeared at a hotel where foreign journalists are staying in the capital.

The leader of the NTC “has lost his credibility by repeatedly lying to the press,” said a woman who asked to remain anonymous while criticizing the rebel leader because she came from a prominent family in Benghazi. A spokesman for the council refused to talk when contacted by phone today and then turned off his phone.

These latest developments have compounded local doubts about the NTC in the wake of the July 29 assassination of rebel military commander Abdel Fatah Younis.

"These things have been happening because the basic foundation of the council is not well organized because they have a lack of experience about how to deal with national matters," says Mohamed El Obeidi, a political science professor at Garyounis University in Benghazi. "They're not that politically experienced in these things. On this basis there have been gaps on the NTC, the biggest and hardest is the assassination of Younis."

Qaddafi forces retreating from BregaThe rebels’ military spokesman in Benghazi, Ahmed Bani, said in the early morning hours of Tuesday that 95 percent of Tripoli was under rebel control, but that pockets of resistance were fighting back fiercely.

Qaddafi’s forces are barricaded in his compound of Bab Al Aziziyah and are using their position to indiscriminately bomb neighborhoods, he said. He added that Qaddafi was using Grad missiles to bomb civilian areas, and said Qaddafi’s son Khamis, commander of a feared military brigade, was likely inside Bab Al Aziziyah.

In the east, rebels were still fighting for the oil refinery in the city of Brega, Mr. Bani said, though some of Qaddafi’s forces are retreating from the area and heading to his hometown, Sirte. Rebels have been fighting for months for the oil facilities, which under normal operation bring in $35 million per day. They have been wary of allowing the facilities to be bombed, and he said that was why the rebels have still not taken control of them.

Al Jazeera also reported that the oil town of Ras Lanuf had fallen to rebels as well.

Qaddafi himself is still on the loose, his whereabouts a mystery, and Sirte still under control of his troops. Bani said rebel troops will not attack Sirte, but will wait for residents to rise up against the colonel. Electricity to the city has been cut for more than a week.

IN PICTURES: Qaddafi through the years

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Tripoli says NATO strike kills dozens of civilians (Reuters)

ZLITAN, Libya (Reuters) – Libyan officials said on Tuesday dozens of civilians had been killed in a NATO strike on a cluster of farmhouses east of Tripoli, but the alliance said it hit a legitimate military target.

A strike causing large numbers of civilian casualties could undermine support in some NATO nations for a campaign to oust Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi that has proved much longer, bloodier and more costly than its backers had expected.

A spokesman for Gaddafi's government, who took foreign reporters to the scene of the strike, said 85 people had been killed when missiles struck farm compounds in the village of Majar, about 150 km (90 miles) east of Tripoli.

He said the dead were 33 children, 32 women and 20 men.

Standing on a pile of rubble, Moussa Ibrahim told reporters: "This is a crime beyond imagination. Everything about this place is civilian."

There was no evidence of weaponry at the farmhouses but neither was there immediately visible blood or body parts.

Government officials provided footage that appeared to show men combing through the rubble at one of the bomb sites at night retrieving human remains, including the bodies of two children.

This correspondent, taken to the hospital in Zlitan by Libyan government officials, counted 20 body bags in one area, some of them stacked one on top of the other.

Most of the dead at the Zlitan hospital appeared to be men but some were children. Medical workers opened some of the body bags. One contained the body of a child who appeared to be about two years old. Another had inside the remains of a child.

In total, reporters saw about 30 bodies at the Zlitan hospital. Officials said the rest of the people killed in the air strike had been taken to other hospitals, but Reuters was unable to verify that information independently.

Hundreds of men also attended a burial in Majar, carrying a parade of simple wooden coffins, draped with flags.

"They (NATO) do not differentiate between soldiers, children and old people," said Abdulkader Al-Hawali, a fifth-year medical student at the hospital in Zlitan.

At a news conference in Brussels, a NATO military spokesman said the target of the strikes was a military staging area which was being used to support government attacks on civilians.

"This was a legitimate target and by striking it NATO has reduced the pro-Gaddafi forces' ability to threaten and attack civilians," Colonel Roland Lavoie told a regular briefing.

"We do not have evidence of civilian casualties at this stage, although casualties among military personnel, including mercenaries, are very likely due to the nature of the target."

NATO forces have been mounting regular attacks, from both sea and air, on targets around Zlitan, where the alliance says government forces are killing and persecuting civilians who are trying to end his 41-year rule.

Gaddafi has denied attacking civilians, and says the NATO bombing campaign is an act of colonial aggression aimed at stealing Libya's plentiful oil.

Libya's conflict began in February when thousands of people protested against Gaddafi.

Western powers say the Libyan leader must relinquish power but despite months of pounding by NATO bombs, defections from his inner circle and international sanctions, Gaddafi is showing no signs of wanting to quit.

In an effort to tighten the noose, the European Union is set this week to widen sanctions by adding a Libyan oil firm and a government administrative department to a blacklist, bringing to 49 the number of Libyan entities targeted by EU sanctions.

"These measures show the determination of the international community in maintaining the isolation of the regime in Tripoli," the French Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

Power and petrol shortages have been worsening in Gaddafi's Tripoli stronghold, deepening public frustration.

NATO said Tuesday its warplanes had also bombed a Libyan warship docked in Tripoli after observing that weapons were being taken from it that were expected to be used in attacks.

REBEL RESHUFFLE

Gaddafi's rebel opponents, meanwhile, are struggling to advance toward Tripoli and their administration in the eastern city of Benghazi was rocked by the assassination last month of the rebel military chief.

Mustafa Abdel Jalil, leader of the rebel National Transitional Council, dismissed the council's executive arm on Monday in what analysts said was an effort to restore the opposition's credibility.

If confirmed, the casualties in the village of Majar would not be the first time that NATO activity in Libya has resulted in civilian deaths.

In June, NATO admitted it destroyed a house in Tripoli in which Libyan officials said nine civilians were killed. The alliance blamed a missile malfunction.

Shortly afterwards, the Libyan government reported almost 20 people were killed in a strike on the home of a member of Libya's 12-strong Revolutionary Command Council, led by Gaddafi.

Libyan officials say hundreds of civilians have been killed since the NATO bombing campaign began. But in most cases they have not supplied firm proof while in some instances the evidence provided has been contradictory.

(Additional reporting by Hamid Ould in Algiers, Joseph Nasr in Berline, and David Brunnstrom in Brussels; Writing by Christian Lowe; Editing by Giles Elgood and Janet Lawrence)

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