Libyan Civil War Megathread

[Iormlund]

Not with Scuds. Maybe one of his Korean missiles could get to Mallorca.

[Josquius]

I don't fancy his chances of hitting the target there.
Why not just shoot at Italy?

[Caliga]

I don't fancy his chances of hitting the target there.
Why not just shoot at Italy?

Why would he do something like that?  HAY GUYS INVADE ME WITH YER WHOLE ARMY PLZ... 

Then again, it is Gadhafi....

Then again, it is Italy...

[Razgovory]

I don't fancy his chances of hitting the target there.
Why not just shoot at Italy?

Why would he do something like that?  HAY GUYS INVADE ME WITH YER WHOLE ARMY PLZ... 

Then again, it is Gadhafi....

Then again, it is Italy...

Cause a collapse of the Italian government.  He's crazy enough to actually try it, and does not actually have much to lose.  It's difficult to know exactly how Europe would respond.

[Josquius]

I don't fancy his chances of hitting the target there.
Why not just shoot at Italy?

Why would he do something like that?  HAY GUYS INVADE ME WITH YER WHOLE ARMY PLZ... 

Then again, it is Gadhafi....

Then again, it is Italy...

Why would Spain be any better?

And hey. The Italians sending troops in could really help Gadaffi in his 'omg colonialists!11' rants.

[Razgovory]

A lesson learned from the Madrid bombing.

[Caliga]

Why would Spain be any better?

How about not shooting missiles at Europe at all?

[jimmy olsen]

The end of the war is upon us.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/libya/8713761/Libya-conflict-Col-Gaddafi-faces-rebel-uprising-on-streets-of-Tripoli.html

Libya conflict: Col Gaddafi faces rebel uprising on streets of Tripoli

Fighting erupted in Tripoli overnight after rebels closed in on the Libyan capital, raising hopes among his opponents that Muammar Gaddafi's regime is finally on the brink of collapse.

By Nick Meo, in Zintan, Libya

12:03AM BST 21 Aug 2011

Gunfire, anti-aircraft fire and explosions rang out across the city on Saturday night as rebel commanders hailed the start of an attack on the dictator's final stronghold.

Residents reported fighting in neighbourhoods in the north, east and south-west of the city and said rebels were in the streets, although the Libyan government insisted the capital was "safe and stable".

Jumma Ibrahim, a rebel spokesman, said: "The revolution from inside Tripoli has officially started in many parts ... of Tripoli, and is expected to spread to all of Tripoli."

But in a typically defiant audio message broadcast on state television early on Sunday, Col Gaddafi claimed to have repelled the rebels in the city.

"Those rats ... were attacked by the masses tonight and we eliminated them," he said, adding that rebel activity in Tripoli had amounted to little more than "fireworks". He called on his supporters to mass against the rebels and win back the towns that had fallen to them.

But a British nurse working in Tripoli told the BBC that it had been a "horrific night" of fighting in the capital.

Colonel Fadlallah Haroun, a rebel military commander in Benghazi, claimed the fighting marked the beginning of an assault on the capital co-ordinated with Nato forces.

Col Haroun said that weapons were assembled and sent by tugboats to Tripoli on Friday night.

"The fighters in Tripoli are rising up in two places at the moment - some are in the Tajoura neighborhood and the other is near the Matiga airport," he told the Arabic satellite channel Al-Jazeera.

A senior rebel official said the "next hours are crucial" and claimed many pro-Gaddafi units had fled.

"The zero hour has started. The rebels in Tripoli have risen up," said Abdel Hafiz Ghoga, vice-chairman of the NTC, based in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi.

"There is co-ordination with the rebels in Tripoli. This was a pre-set plan. They've been preparing for a while. There's coordination with the rebels approaching from the east, west and south."

Mr Ghoga said Nato warplanes were launching raids to distract Col Gaddafi's forces. "The next hours are crucial. Many of their (pro-Gaddafi) brigades and their commanders have fled."

A Libyan government spokesman admitted that "armed people sneaked into Tripoli" but claimed they had been dealt with. They said the rebels attacked in "small groups of a few dozen".

While the precise scale of Saturday night's unrest was unclear, rebel advances on Tripoli in the past few days have already heaped unprecedented pressure on Gaddafi.

The six-month conflict took a dramatic turn last week when rebels suddenly seized the coastal city of Zawiyah just 30 miles west of the capital.

Meanwhile in Zintan, the rebel headquarters town in the western mountains, streams of red tracer fire lit up the night sky as a rumour spread that Gaddafi and his hated sons had quit.

Hundreds gathered in Zintan's centre at about 10pm on Saturday as fighters, old men and even young boys fired thousands of rounds into the air amid a joyous outpouring of excitment.

"It is a victory for us if he has gone," said Yusuf Al-Hamadi, a student, aged 23. "But I cannot believe it yet."

Walid Alsuuni, a student from Zintan aged 29, said: "The report is that Gaddafi and his sons have escaped outside Libya. They have gone and we are free. If it is true, this means that the war is over and peace will return to Libya."

However Libya's Information Minister, Moussa Ibrahim, said Gaddafi remained the leader of the Libyan people and insisted the capital was well-defended.

In comments broadcast on state television, Ibrahim renewed a call to rebels to surrender, saying they would be forgiven even if "they have killed our relatives".

"I ensure Libyans that Gaddafi is your leader ... Tripoli is surrounded by thousands to defend it," he said.

Even as the rebels appeared to be closing in on the capital abd rumours swirled again that his father may have fled the country already, Col Gaddafi's son Seif al-Islam said the regime would not "abandon the fight".

"We have a long breath. We are in our land and in our country. We will resist for six months, one year, two years ... and we will win," he said.

[HisMajestyBOB]

It will be over by Christmas 

[grumbler]

It will be over by Christmas 

Home before the Christmas Tree needles fall!

[Ed Anger]

My murder boner is returning.

[Caliga]

Rooting for Gadhafi now.

[Grinning_Colossus]

Libyan opposition fighters say they have entreated the Green Square in central Tripoli. They entered the capital  from the west and are about eight kilometres from the centre of the city.

Britain's Sky news quoting its reporter on the ground, said crowds of Libyans had poured into the streets to greet the advancing rebel army, adding that there were no signs of resistance from forces loyal to veteran leader Muammar Gaddafi.

http://blogs.aljazeera.net/liveblog/Libya

[Admiral Yi]

Damn that was quick.

[citizen k]

TRIPOLI, Libya (AP) — The trappings of Moammar Gadhafi's regime crumbled Sunday as hundreds of euphoric Libyan rebels overran a major military base defending the capital, carted away truckloads of weapons and raced to the outskirts of Tripoli with virtually no resistance.

The rebels' surprising and speedy leap forward, after six months of largely deadlocked civil war, was packed into just a few dramatic hours. By nightfall, they had advanced more than 20 miles to the edge of Gadhafi's last major bastion of support.

Along the way, they freed several hundred prisoners from a regime lockup. The fighters and the prisoners — many looking weak and dazed and showing scars and bruises from beatings — embraced and wept with joy.

Thousands of jubilant civilians rushed out of their homes to cheer the long convoys of pickup trucks packed with rebel fighters shooting in the air. Some were hoarse, shouting: "We are coming for you, frizz-head," a mocking nickname for Gadhafi. In villages along the way that fell to the rebels one after another, mosque loudspeakers blared "Allahu Akbar," or "God is great."

"We are going to sacrifice our lives for freedom," said Nabil al-Ghowail, a 30-year-old dentist holding a rifle in the streets of Janzour, a suburb just six miles west of Tripoli. Heavy gunfire erupted nearby.

As town after town fell and Gadhafi forces melted away, the mood turned euphoric. Some shouted: "We are getting to Tripoli tonight." Others were shooting in the air, honking horns and yelling "Allahu Akbar."

Inside Tripoli, widespread clashes erupted for a second day between rebel "sleeper cells" and Gadhafi loyalists. Rebels fighter who spoke to relatives in Tripoli by phone said hundreds rushed into the streets in anti-regime protests in several neighborhoods.

Libyan state television aired an angry audio message from Gadhafi Sunday night, urging families in Tripoli to arm themselves and fight for the capital.

"The time is now to fight for your politics, your oil, your land," he said. "I am with you in Tripoli — together until the ends of the earth," Gadhafi shouted.

The day's first breakthrough came when hundreds of rebels fought their way into a major symbol of the Gadhafi regime — the base of the elite 32nd Brigade commanded by Gadhafi's son, Khamis. Fighters said they met with little resistance.

Hundreds of rebels cheered wildly and danced as they took over the compound filled with eucalyptus trees, raising their tricolor from the front gate and tearing down a large billboard of Gadhafi.

Inside, they cracked open wooden crates labeled "Libyan Armed Forces" and loaded their trucks with huge quantities of munitions. One of the rebels carried off a tube of grenades, while another carted off two mortars.

"This is the wealth of the Libyan people that he was using against us," said Ahmed al-Ajdal, 27, pointing to his haul. "Now we will use it against him and any other dictator who goes against the Libyan people."

One group started up a tank, drove it out of the gate, crushing the median of the main highway and driving off toward Tripoli. Rebels celebrated the capture with deafening amounts of celebratory gunfire, filling the air with smoke.

Across the street, rebels raided a huge warehouse, making off with hundreds of crates of rockets, artillery shells and large-caliber ammunition. The warehouse had once been using to storage packaged foods, and in the back, cans of beans were still stacked toward the ceiling.

The prisoners had been held in the walled compound and when the rebels rushed in, they freed more than 300 of them.

"We were sitting in our cells when all of a sudden we heard lots of gunfire and people yelling 'Allahu Akbar.' We didn't know what was happening, and then we saw rebels running in and saying 'We're on your side.' And they let us out," said 23-year-old Majid al-Hodeiri from Zawiya. He said he was captured four months ago by Gadhafi's forces and taken to base. He said he was beaten and tortured while under detention.

Many of the prisoners looked disoriented as they stopped at a gathering place for fighters several miles away from the base. Some had signs of severe beatings. Others were dressed in tattered T-shirts or barefoot. Rebels fighters and prisoners embraced.

From the military base, about 16 miles west of Tripoli, the convoy pushed on toward the capital.

Mahmoud al-Ghwei, 20 and unarmed, said he had just came along with a friend for the ride .

"It's a great feeling. For all these years, we wanted freedom and Gadhafi kept it from us. Now we're going to get rid of Gadhafi and get our freedom," he said.

At nightfall, the fighters reached Janzour, a Tripoli suburb. Along the way, they were greeted by civilians lining the streets and waving rebel flags. One man grabbed a rebel flag that had been draped over the hood of a slow-moving car and kissed it, overcome with emotion.

"We are not going back," said Issam Wallani, another rebel. "God willing, this evening we will enter Tripoli."

The uprising against Gadhafi broke out in mid-February, and anti-regime protests quickly spread across the vast desert nation with only 6 million people. A brutal regime crackdown quickly transformed the protests into an armed rebellion. Rebels seized Libya's east, setting up an internationally recognized transitional government there, and two pockets in the west, the port city of Misrata and the Nafusa mountain range.

Gadhafi clung to the remaining territory, and his forces failed to subdue the rebellion in Misrata, Libya's third-largest city, and in the Nafusa mountains. Since the start of August, thousands of rebel fighters, including many who fled Gadhafi-held cities, joined an offensive launched from the mountains toward the coast.

The fighters who had set out from the mountains three weeks ago rushed toward Tripoli on Sunday, start out at dawn from a village just east of the coastal city of Zawiya. Only a day earlier had the rebels claimed full control of Zawiya, an anti-regime stronghold with 200,000 people and Libya's last functioning oil refinery.

Rebels said Saturday that they had launched their first attack on Tripoli in coordination with NATO and gunbattles and mortar rounds rocked the city. NATO aircraft also made heavier than usual bombing runs after nightfall, with loud explosions booming across the city.

On Sunday, more heavy machine gun fire and explosions rang out across the capital with more clashes and protests.

Government minders in a hotel where foreign journalists have been staying in Tripoli armed themselves on Sunday in anticipation of a rebel take over. The hotel manager said he had received calls from angry rebels threatening to charge the hotel to capture the government's spokesman, Moussa Ibrahim.

Heavy gun fire was heard in the neighborhood around the Rixos hotel, and smoke was seen rising from a close by building.

"We are scared and staying in our houses, but the younger boys are going out to protect our homes," said a woman who spoke to The Associated Press by telephone from the pro-rebel Tripoli neighborhood of Bin Ashour. She spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal. She said a neighbor's son was shot dead on Saturday night by Gadhafi troops as he tried to protect his street with a group of rebel youth.

Nuri al-Zawi, another resident of Bin Ashour, told the AP by phone that the rebels were using light arms to protect their streets, and in some cases were using only their bodies to fend off the Gadhafi troops riding in pickup trucks.

"We are used to this situation now. We are a city that is cut off from the world now," he said.

The residents reported clashes in neighborhoods all over Tripoli as well as the city's Mitiga military airport. They said they heard loud explosions and exchanges in of gunfire in the Fashloum, Tajoura and Bin Ashour neighborhoods. Residents and opposition fighters also reported large anti-regime protests in those same neighborhoods. In some of them, thousands braved the bullets of snipers perched atop high buildings.

Mukhtar Lahab, a rebel commander closing in on Tripoli and a former captain in Gadhafi's army, said his relatives inside the capital reported mass protests in four neighborhoods known as sympathetic to the opposition: Fashloum, Souk al-Jouma, Tajoura and Janzour. He said mosques there were rallying residents with chants of "Allahu Akbar" or "God is great," broadcast on loudspeakers.