Heavy gunfire was heard following the blasts, Tripoli residents told CNN.
The Lebanese army said it
had established a security cordon around the blast sites. The bombs
caused "great material damage" in addition to the casualties, the army
said.
The first blast occurred
near al Taqwa mosque, which is led by a Sunni sheikh known for his links
to Syrian rebels, Lebanon's state-run National News Agency said.
The second occurred
minutes later near al Salam mosque, close to the residence of acting
Prime Minister Najib Mikati, as well as Samir Al-Jisr, a Sunni member of
parliament and the former head of the country's Internal Security
Forces, Ashraf Rifi.
Rifi is despised by Hezbollah and Lebanese politicians friendly to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
It was unclear if any of
those figures were targets of the attack, but NNA said two Salafist
sheikhs believed to be possible targets of the blasts were unharmed.
Mikati is not in Tripoli, NNA reported.
The second blast produced
a crater 5 meters (16.4 feet) across and caused damage to six nearby
residential buildings, NNA said. More than 60 cars were incinerated, the
news agency said.
Eyewitness video posted
to YouTube purporting to be of the al Taqwa blast showed thick smoke,
flames and what appeared to be burning vehicles. Another video posted to
Facebook showed a large plume of smoke rising into the air near what is
said to be the mosque site.
You might be thinking it's Hezbullah, but Hezbullah condemned the attacks. For what it's worth....
"I see seven bodies inside several burned cars," said a Reuters
witness, speaking from near the Taqwa mosque, which is frequented by
Sunni Islamist hardliners, where the first blast occurred.
A security source said several people were killed in the second blast outside al-Salam mosque.
Ambulances
rushed to the scene and heavy black smoke covered the sky. Television
footage showed crushed cars with their windows smashed. Some cars were
burning. People ran through the streets carrying a woman whose face was
obscured by blood.
Two bodies could be seen on the ground and apartment blocks had their windows smashed.
"There are many casualties in the two mosques, we still do not have a clear idea of the figures," a security source said.
It's just Muslims killing Muslims. You don't think anyone is going to care, do you?
Hassan al-Mouri, the 40-year old commander of a Sunni, pro-Hezbullah militia was assassinated in Tripoli, Lebanon on Thursday.
Al-Mouri was gunned down by "masked men on motorbikes," along with a
security official and a bystander, according to a security source quoted
by the Lebanese Naharnet website.
The 40 year-old leader of a pro-Hezbollah Sunni militia was standing
at the entrance to his home along with the two other men when the gunmen
drove up and shot them.
Hassan al-Mouri was a controversial figure. Unlike most Sunnis in
Tripoli, the al-Mouri family support the Iranian-backed Shia
organization and its Syrian and Iranian patrons, as opposed to the Sunni
rebels in Syria.
He had previously been the target of a failed assassination attempt
in a city which is split between the largely Alawite supporters of the
Syrian regime of Bashar el-Assad, and their Sunni neighbors, who support
the rebels.
His death will contribute to the increasing political and sectarian
divisions within Lebanon, as the civil war in neighboring Syria
continues to spill over.
If it wasn't this, it would be something else. No, they can't just all get along.
Lebanese media reported several people injured
Saturday night in the fierce fighting between pro- and anti-Bashar
Assad partisans in the country’s second largest city, as sectarian
tensions threatened to plunge the country into further chaos.
The army said Saturday night it would enter
the Alawite neighborhood of Jabal Mohsen to restore order, after the
worst fighting the city has seen since the latest round of violence
erupted on Thursday.
Some seven people have been killed and scores more injured in three days of fighting, according to Lebanese media.
On Friday, gunmen who support and oppose Assad
clashed in Tripoli, leaving six people dead and more than 20 wounded,
according to the National News Agency. Clashes between the Sunni
neighborhood of Bab Tabbaneh, which supports Syria’s rebels, and Jabal
Mohsen, which supports Assad, have broken out repeatedly in recent
months. Assad is Alawite, a Shiite offshoot sect.
Earlier on Saturday, Mikati began his first day as caretaker prime minister until a new government can be elected.
Mikati’s abrupt resignation plunged the nation
into uncertainty amid heightened sectarian tensions and clashes related
to the civil war next door in Syria.
Mikati stepped down on Friday amid a political
deadlock between Lebanon’s two main political camps and infighting
within his own government.
“I hope that this resignation will provide an
opening in the existing deadlock and pave the way for a (political)
solution,” Mikati said, following a meeting with Michel Suleiman.
Mikati has been prime minister since June
2011, heading a government dominated by the Shiite militant group
Hezbollah and its allies, many of whom have a close relationship with
Syria.
Has anyone noticed yet that there is only one stable country in this region? Hmmm.
Shocka: Libyan Jewish refugee dropping plans to renovate synagogue
What a surprise. David Gerbi, the Libyan-born Italian Jew who wanted to renovate Tripoli's Dar Bishi synagogue and move back to Libya is having second thoughts.
Gerbi, a 56-year-old psychoanalyst who has lived in Italy, said he had permission for the restoration from the local Muslim cleric and members of the Transitional National Council, the force that ousted Moammar Gadhafi back in August.
But two days into his effort, it came to an abrupt end.
"The building is not safe. The area is not safe. There are a lot of people armed. We don't know what happens. So the best thing for him is to leave," said Hadi Belazi, one of many people in a crowd that gathered outside the synagogue in the city's old Jewish Quarter.
The atmosphere was tense, and Belzai's son Haitham agreed with his father.
"It's not the right time for this," he said. "It's a very sensitive matter. We appreciate having different religions in our country. We want that. But not at this time."
...
For more than 40 years there was virtually no Jewish presence in Libya, though there was anti-Semitism. Calling someone a Jew in Libya is considered a serious insult.
Despite this, Gerbi came back to Libya to help the rebels as they ousted Gadhafi in a six-month uprising. Gerbi, who assisted with psychological treatment, earned the nickname "the revolutionary Jew."
He was widely believed to be the first Libyan Jew to return, though he hoped he would not be the last.
But his prayers were interrupted at the synagogue, and he emerged to the commotion outside.
"They told me that if I am not leaving now, they are going to come and they are going to kill me because they don't want Jews here," he said.
As he was talking, his security guard whisked him away, afraid for his life.
"My intention was to clean the synagogue and take the garbage out of there," Gerbi said. "I am scared only of God. If I have to die in this moment, I die."
As he walked down the street, people turned to look at him. Wearing a yarmulke and a Star of David pendant, he's was hardly inconspicuous. One Libyan man confided he had never seen a Jew before.
“This is not a one-man show,” said Raphael Luzon, a Libyan Jew living in the UK who had negotiated with longtime Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi and is involved in talks with the National Transitional Council (NTC).
“You have to be part of a framework, part of an organization. I have received many calls from [Libyan Jews in] Rome because he is not talking about the community but about himself as a new messiah. We have to move very carefully.”
In Rome, a leader of the local Libyan Jewish community, the second largest after Israel, was also critical of Gerbi’s tactics.
“I personally believe that such personal initiatives, without any coordination with the Jewish community, is not in its interests,” said Elio Raccah over the phone. “We believe such talks should be done on a collective basis. The rebuilding of a synagogue by itself is an isolated concession because what we want is restitution of our rights and certainly not of a single building.”
But Meir Kahlon, the head of the Israeli-based World Organization of Libyan Jewry, rejected those arguments, saying Gerbi acted responsibly and with authority.
“I sent Gerbi,” said Kahlon. “We speak for all the Libyan Jews in Israel and many outside the country. I don’t need permission from the Libyan Jews in Italy or the UK.”
Kahlon defended Gerbi, saying he did not plan to renovate the building, only to clean it from debris so that Jews could pray there. “The problem is that everybody thinks they can do better,” he added.
Talks between representatives of the roughly 200,000 Jews of Libyan descent in the Diaspora and the Libyan government over restoring their civil rights and restitution of Jewish property have been going on for years without real progress.
I don't expect to see a lot of Jews living in Libya for some time to come.
Are Jews going to return to Libya? That's what at least one Libyan Jew would like to see happen. Italian resident David Gerbi fled Libya with his family in 1967. Now, he'd like to go back.
Libyan Jewish exile David Gerbi said he has dreamed of restoring this synagogue for 10 years, when smoke from New York's burning World Trade Center twin towers evoked one of the most powerful memories of his Libyan childhood.
The 12-year-old Gerbi and his family fled Tripoli in 1967 when an Arab-Israeli war stoked anger against the Jewish state and led to attacks on Jews in his neighborhood.
Former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi expelled the rest of Libya's 38,000 Jews two years later and confiscated their assets. Most Tripoli synagogues have since been destroyed or converted to mosques. Jewish cemeteries have been razed to make way for office blocks on the coast.
Gerbi says he is the first Jew to return to Libya since the revolt that ousted Muammar Gaddafi in August.
He said he knows this because he negotiated the extraction of the last one -his aged, dying aunt who stayed behind to protect the family treasures- from a hospice in 2002.
Now that Gaddafi is gone, Gerbi wants to help interim Libyan leaders rebuild the lost Libya of his childhood and foster the type of religious tolerance between Jews and Muslims that exists in other parts of the Maghreb such as Morocco.
And he wants the Dar Bishi synagogue to be the symbol of reconciliation between Jewish and Muslim Libyans.
Talking over the Muslim call to prayer one evening last week, he told Reuters: "Some tell me I need to accept it's over. I say no, it's our shop, it's our synagogue and it's not over."
"There is something unresolved, unfinished. That is why I am here."
The picture above is Gerbi in the synagogue. It all seems pretty resolved to me. The rebel leadership says "no comment." What could go wrong?
Sky's special correspondent Alex Crawford, accompanying the rebels, said the opposition fighters were greeted with scenes of jubilation as they made their way through the outskirts of the capital.
As they entered the city, their cars gridlocked the roads, she said, and hundreds of people came out onto the streets to greet them.
The rebels responded with celebratory gunfire, she said.
"We are now just a very short distance from the centre, with more and more people coming onto the streets.
"They (the rebels) had been expecting much more resistance but there has been very little."
"There is absolutely no question in their minds that they have beaten Gaddafi and it is just a question of how he will go," she added.
The quick advance came after the fighters captured the base of the Khamis Brigade, 16 miles west of the capital.
It is said to be one of the best-trained and equipped units in the Libyan military and is commanded by Col Gaddafi's 27-year-old son Khamis.
Aside from the main rebel movement from the west of the city, fighting also broke out in the city's Mitiga airbase, while the suburb of Tajoura reportedly also fell under rebel control.
Gunfire was also heard near the hotel where foreign media are staying.
As the rebel movement came closer to the capital, Col Gaddafi broadcast a message on state television calling on Libyan people to come from all regions and liberate Tripoli.
He said he was "afraid Tripoli will burn" but that he will remain in the city until the end.
The Libyan government also earlier appealed for an immediate ceasefire and an end to Nato's "aggression".
Spokesman for Colonel Muammar Gaddafi's regime, Moussa Ibrahim, told reporters the rebels were nothing without Nato and they would never be able to take Libya.
Maybe. But Gadhafi is now gone.
Let's go to the videotape.
Hmmm.
UPDATE 12:06 AM
Israel Radio reports that Gadhafi's personal security detail surrendered, that Seif al-Islam Gadhafi has been arrested and that Muammar Gadhafi himself is believed to have fled to Chad or Algeria. Gadhafi's last speech, in which he promised to fight to the last drop of blood, was apparently given via phone from his hiding place.
UPDATE 12:13 AM
Another Gadhafi son (Khamis?) also arrested.
Gadhafi spokesman has just told CNN that they will continue to fight.
In an earlier post, I reported that Seif al-Arab Gadhafi and his three sons, a son and three of the grandsons of Libyan leader Muammar Gadhafi, were killed on Saturday night in a NATO attack on one of the Gadhafi family compounds. On Sunday, the Libyan leader exacted his revenge, letting his supporters loose on various NATO countries' embassies in Tripoli. Among the embassies attacked was Britain's. The destruction may be seen in the pictures above and below, which I screen-captured from a BBC video which can be viewed here. The Brits, who didn't seem too phased when they discovered that they had been duped into releasing Pan Am 103 hijacker Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, finally decided enough was enough. They have given the Libyan ambassador to the UK, Omar Jelban (pictured below), 24 hours to leave the country.
"I condemn the attacks on the British embassy premises in Tripoli as well as the diplomatic missions of other countries," said the foreign secretary, William Hague. "The Vienna convention requires the Gaddafi regime to protect diplomatic missions in Tripoli. By failing to do so that regime has once again breached its international responsibilities and obligations. I take the failure to protect such premises very seriously indeed."
The statement went on: "As a result, I have taken the decision to expel the Libyan ambassador. He is persona non grata pursuant to article 9 of the Vienna convention on diplomatic relations and has 24 hours to leave the country."
...
The Gaddafi regime appears to have mounted a symbolic attack on empty diplomatic residences and embassies in Tripoli. There are no British diplomats in the Libyan capital.
Other foreign residences were also targeted, as the UN announced it was taking all its remaining international staff out of Tripoli.
The Italian foreign ministry said its embassy and several others in Tripoli were damaged by vandals and accused the Gaddafi regime of failing to take measures to protect foreign missions.
Here's a report from al-Jazeera on the expulsion of Libya's ambassador to the UK. Let's go to the videotape.
Let's see if anyone thinks twice about sending an ambassador back when things die down.
Here's video of a woman in Tripoli who burst into the international media's hotel to tell them that she had been raped over the course of two days by henchmen of Muammar Gadhafi.
Let's go to the videotape.
There are descriptions of what happened to her here, here and here.
The Western media seem to believe that the rest of the World is just like them. Sadly, that is not the case. Most of the Middle East is a thicket of tribalism and holy war that hasn't changed a whole lot in the last millennium.
Most Israeli Jews realize that given the opportunity, the Arabs would murder us all in a minute. The West either doesn't get that or doesn't care.
Video: Christiane Amanpour is too polite to the Gadhafi's
ABC's Christiane Amanpour visits Tripoli, Libya and meets with two of Muammar Gadhafi's sons, Seif al-Islam and Saaadi.
Let's go to the videotape.
I find it curious that once she gets to town, she sticks to the hotel. And the interviews might have been a lot more meaningful if she had some facts to throw at them.
NY Times reporters confirm that Tripoli is all you've heard about
The Libyan government reversed itself and decided to allow foreign reporters into the country on Friday night. And while the Libyans tried to keep control over where the reporters went, the truth eventually came out: Everything you have heard about the brutality in Tripoli is true.
Witnesses described snipers and antiaircraft guns firing at unarmed civilians. Many said security forces had been removing the dead and wounded from streets and hospitals, apparently in an effort to hide the mounting toll.
But when government-picked drivers escorted journalists on tours of the city on Saturday morning, the extent of the unrest was unmistakable. Workers were still hastily painting over graffiti calling Colonel Qaddafi a “bloodsucker” and demanding his ouster.
Just off the tour route were long bread lines where residents said they were afraid to be seen talking to journalists.
And though government forces dominated the city center — heavily armed checkpoints staked out downtown while orange-suited cleanup crews were out in force around the central Green Square — there were signs of defiance in other neighborhoods, where the streets were blocked by makeshift barricades of broken televisions, charred tree trunks and cinder blocks left over from protests and street fights the night before.
“I have seen more than 68, I think, people killed,” said a doctor who had been helping out at a neighborhood clinic in Tajoura and gave his name only as Hussein. “But the people who have died, they don’t leave them in the same place.
We have seen them taking them in the Qaddafi cars, and nobody knows where they are taking the people who have died.” He added, “Even the ones with just a broken hand or something they are taking away.”
In some ways, the mixed results of Colonel Qaddafi’s theatrical gamble — opening the curtains to the world with great fanfare, even though the stage is in near-chaotic disarray — are an apt metaphor for the increasingly untenable situation in the country.
There were unconfirmed reports Saturday that thousands of armed rebels from other regions of the country were marching toward Tripoli. Rebels have already taken over and held the eastern half of the populous coast. On Saturday, after days of fighting, they also reportedly took Sabratha, a town near the capital known for its Roman ruins.
At the birthplace of the revolt, in the eastern city of Benghazi, a group of senior military officers who had defected were forming a council to lead their troops against Colonel Qaddafi’s forces. One of them, an air force general, said three air bases had defected to the rebels, along with the region’s military police.
And the rebels said they were in the process of forming an interim government to oversee the areas no longer under Colonel Qaddafi’s control. It is expected to include Mustafa Mohamed Abd al-Jalil, a former justice minister who quit to join the insurrection and may now assume the role of interim prime minister.
“The temporary location of the government will be Benghazi, until the liberation of Tripoli,” said Iman Bugaighis, a spokeswoman for a coalition of antigovernment activists.
But so far, the protesters say, the rebel force heading for Tripoli has been stymied at Surt, a Qaddafi stronghold on the coastal road where his tribe is concentrated. In Tripoli, home to nearly two million of Libya’s roughly six and a half million people, Colonel Qaddafi and his special militias may have unleashed enough firepower to enable them to keep a firm grasp on the city for some time.
His plainclothes police and uniformed security forces appeared in control of most of the city’s largely deserted streets on Saturday, and there were unconfirmed reports that he was following through on his threats to distribute weapons to his supporters.
Clearly, both the rebels and Colonel Qaddafi appear to have the will and the wherewithal to fight on for some time.
I don't believe that Gadhafi could ever again win the consent of the Libyan people for his continued rule. But in the Arab Muslim world, you usually don't need the consent of the governed anyway.
Here's a news update in English from inside Libya.
Let's go to the videotape.
Note that around the 4:00 mark, he says that all the foreigners have left Tripoli. Well, all except the Americans. Reader Mike P tells me that CNN reported on Thursday night that the US is the only country who told its nationals to go to Tripoli to be evacuated.
Note how he says that Tripoli is abandoned and that there are checkpoints set up by the various fighting parties. The relative calm before the storm?
Later he says that he saw 522 dead bodies and says that most of the injured aren't being treated because they are afraid to go out. And that a doctor told him that 400 women in Tripoli were raped in the last three days.
Imagine what would happen if - God forbid - they ever got into a Jewish city in Israel....
Video: Libyans escaping to Tunisia and a siege in Tripoli
Here's another CNN report - this one from the Tunisian border with Libya. It also includes some amateur footage from Tripoli, which is apparently under siege.
Fortunately for Michael, he's not there now, but back in 2005 (the date on the link to his original article in the sidebar is December 30, 2005) Michael Totten visited Libya and wrote about it for LA Weekly. He re-upped the post at Pajamas Media. As usual, the pictures are stunning (okay, most of the country is concrete so they're not as stunning as usual). Here's a very small sample of what he has to say.
The gift shop offered a wide range of totalitarian propaganda books and pamphlets in multiple languages. A fantastic selection of Qaddafi watches ranged in price from $25 to $600. I bought one for $25. Qaddafi is shown wearing his military uniform, officer’s hat and sunglasses like a swaggering Latin American generalissimo. It was busted right out of the box, the hour hand stuck forever at 9 o’clock.
The lobby was plastered all over with portraits of the boss in various poses. He wore shades in most of them, but in some pictures from his early days, he wore a buffoonish 1970s haircut instead.
I had to suck down my giggles. God, was this guy for real? His unexportable Third Universal Theory was internationalist insofar as it obliterated any sense that Tripoli was Middle Eastern or African — at least from the point of view of the back seat of the car. I could have been in any former Soviet republic, or even in some parts of the Bronx. But look at those portraits! Now there was something exotic.
Most of the other men in the lobby (I hadn’t seen any women since I landed) looked like Arab businessmen who bought their suits from Turkish remainder bins. The only expensively dressed man sat at a shiny wooden desk, the kind you’d expect to see at a law firm. He had no work in front of him, not even papers to shuffle. His job was to stare holes through everyone who stepped in and out of the elevator.
There were no towels in my room. The bathroom was, however, generously stocked with products, all of them packaged in green — the color of Islam and Qaddafi’s so-called revolution. The hotel gave me green shampoo, green soap, green bath gel, green toothpaste and even a green shoehorn and comb. All were clearly (and, I must say, unnecessarily) marked “Made in the Great Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya.” There was no booze (it’s banned), no soda, no water, no juice in the mini-bar. A burn the size and shape of a deflated basketball was seared into the carpet.
I switched on the TV: nothing but hysterical state-run propaganda. I couldn’t lower the volume (the knob was broken), but at least I could change the channel and choose whether I wanted to be droned at or screeched at in Arabic.
My window overlooked the Mediterranean Sea and, closer in, a drained and stained swimming pool. There was a forlorn rocky beach down there, cut off from the hotel and everything else by a blank gray slab of a wall. The cold wind whistling into the room from the patio sounded like moaning ghosts trapped in a well.
...
Most apartment buildings were more or less equally dreary, but one did stand out. Architecturally it was just another modernist horror. But a 6-by-8-foot portrait of Qaddafi was bolted to the façade three stories up. It partially blocked the view from two of the balconies. The bastard couldn’t even leave people alone when they were home.
The posters weren’t funny anymore. There were too damn many of them, for one thing. And, besides, Qaddafi is ugly. He may earn a few charisma points for traveling to Brussels and pitching his Bedouin tent on the Parliament lawn, but he’s no Che Guevara in the guapo department.
I felt ashamed that I first found his portraits even slightly amusing. The novelty wore off in less than a day, and he’s been in power longer than I’ve been alive.
He was an abstraction when I first got there. But after walking around his outdoor laboratory and everywhere seeing his beady eyes and that arrogant jut of his mouth, it suddenly hit me. He isn’t merely Libya’s tyrant. He is a man who would be god.
His Mukhabarat, the secret police, are omniscient. His visage is omnipresent. His power is omnipotent.
And he is deranged. He says he’s the sun of Africa. He threatens to ban money and schools. He vanquished beauty and art. He liquidates those who oppose him. He says he can’t help it if the people of Libya love him so much they plaster his portrait up everywhere. Fuck him. I wanted to rip his face from the walls.
...
Worlds can’t meet worlds. But people can meet people. I forget who said that, but I like it, and I thought about it as I walked around inside Libya, hanging out, and talking to regular folks.
In a nation where so many report to the secret police, where a sideways word can get you imprisoned or killed, walking around blue-eyed and palefaced with an American accent has its advantages. I met one shopkeeper who opened right up when he and I found ourselves alone in his store.
“Do Americans know much about Libya?” he said.
“No,” I said. “Not really.”
He wanted to teach me something about his country, but he didn’t know where to start. So he recited encyclopedia factoids.
He listed the principal resources while counting his fingers. I stifled a smirk when he named the border states. (I had looked at a map.) When he told me Arabic was the official language, I wondered if he thought I was stupid or deaf.
“And Qaddafi is our president,” he said. “About him, no comment.” He laughed, but I don’t think he thought it was funny.
“Oh, come on,” I said. “Comment away. I don’t live here.”
He thought about that. For a long drawn-out moment, he calculated the odds and weighed the consequences. Then the dam burst.
“We hate that fucking bastard, we have nothing to do with him. Nothing. We keep our heads down and our mouths shut. We do our jobs, we go home. If I talk, they will take me out of my house in the night and put me in prison.
“Qaddafi steals,” he told me. “He steals from us.” He spoke rapidly now, twice as fast as before, as though he had been holding back all his life. He wiped sweat off his forehead with trembling hands. “The oil money goes to his friends. Tunisians next door are richer and they don’t even have any oil.”
“I know,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
“We get three or four hundred dinars each month to live on. Our families are huge, we have five or six children. It is a really big problem. We don’t make enough to take care of them. I want to live in Lebanon. Beirut is the second Paris. It is civilized! Women and men mix freely in Lebanon.”
Read the whole thing. Until recently, I thought of Gadhafi as a clown. In fact, I still think of him that way. But he's a brutal and deadly clown. He can't die soon enough.
Gadhafi's son meant it - Libyan jets firing on civilians in Tripoli
When Muammar Gadhafi's son Seif al-Islam told Libyans on Sunday night that the regime would "fight until the last man, the last woman, the last bullet," he apparently wasn't exaggerating. Israel Radio reports that Libyan Air Force jets are firing on civilians in Tripoli.
By the way, the crews of those Libyan jets and helicopters (two each) that landed in Malta around 5:30 local time on Monday have asked for asylum. The pilots asked for asylum because they did not want to shoot at their own people anymore. There was a French passenger on one of the jets according to someone in Malta. There are seven people on the aircraft in all. Their escape was not planned and they did not have permission to land.
Here's more from Seif al-Islam Gadhafis speech.
Seif al-Islam Gadhafi, in the regime's first comments on the six days of demonstrations, warned the protesters that they risked igniting a civil war in which Libya's oil wealth "will be burned."
...
"We are not Tunisia and Egypt," he said. "Moammar Gadhafi, our leader, is leading the battle in Tripoli, and we are with him.
"The armed forces are with him. Tens of thousands are heading here to be with him. We will fight until the last man, the last woman, the last bullet," he said in a rambling and sometimes confused speech of nearly 40 minutes.
Although the elder Gadhafi did not appear, his son has often been put forward as the regime's face of reform.
...
In his speech, the younger Gadhafi conceded the army made some mistakes during the protests because the troops were not trained to deal with demonstrators, but he added that the number of dead had been exaggerated, giving a death toll of 84.
He offered to put forward reforms within days that he described as a "historic national initiative" and said the regime was willing to remove some restrictions and begin discussions for a constitution. He offered to change a number of laws, including those covering the media and the penal code.
Dressed in a dark business suit and tie, Seif al-Islam wagged his finger frequently as he delivered his warnings. He said that if protests continued, Libya would slide back to "colonial" rule. "You will get Americans and European fleets coming your way and they will occupy you.
He threatened to "eradicate the pockets of sedition" and said the army will play a main role in restoring order.
"There has to be a firm stand," he said. "This is not the Tunisian or Egyptian army."
Protesters had seized some military bases, tanks and other weapons, he said, blaming Islamists, the media, thugs, drunks and drug abusers, foreigners — including Egyptians and Tunisians.
He also admitted that the unrest had spread to Tripoli, with people firing in central Green Square before fleeing.
And the 'civilized' nations of the world? British Foreign Secretary William Hague called the younger Gadhafi and told him that he has to embark on dialogue and implement reforms. Good luck with that.
Israel Radio has just reported (7:00 pm Monday) that foreign mercenaries hired by Muammar Gadhafi from other Arab countries are landing in Tripoli at this hour. The source for the report is al-Arabiya.
Israel Radio also is citing reports from the BBC - supposedly sourced from British Foreign Secretary William Hague - that Gadhafi is on his way to Venezuela. The Venezuelans are denying it.
Other reports cited by Israel Radio say that Gadhafi is still in Libya but he is not in Tripoli.
Oh and those two air force jets I reported on an hour ago that escaped to Malta..... They weren't trying to escape Gadhafi. It seems that the opposition took over their base in Benghazi and that's why they escaped. That too from Israel Radio based on an al-Jazeera report. The four-man crews have surrendered to Maltese forces. The pilots claimed they were out of fuel. There were apparently also some helicopters.
I am an Orthodox Jew - some would even call me 'ultra-Orthodox.' Born in Boston, I was a corporate and securities attorney in New York City for seven years before making aliya to Israel in 1991 (I don't look it but I really am that old :-). I have been happily married to the same woman for thirty-five years, and we have eight children (bli ayin hara) ranging in age from 13 to 33 years and nine grandchildren. Four of our children are married! Before I started blogging I was a heavy contributor on a number of email lists and ran an email list called the Matzav from 2000-2004. You can contact me at: IsraelMatzav at gmail dot com
