Pakistan and NATO Forces Exchange Fire

The clash took place at Admi Kot Post in the North Waziristan tribal region of Pakistan, an area that American officials have long regarded as a haven used by militants to attack coalition forces inside Afghanistan. NATO officials said they were looking into the incident, and could not immediately confirm whether the helicopters had indeed entered Pakistan’s airspace.

The exchange of fire between NATO and Pakistani forces appeared likely to worsen frictions between Pakistan and the United States. The Pakistani Army “lodged a strong protest and demanded a flag meeting,” the statement said, referring to a meeting between officials from Pakistan and NATO.

Last September, Pakistan shut down for more than a week the land route through Pakistan that NATO uses to supply its forces in Afghanistan, after two Pakistani paramilitary soldiers were killed in a similar border clash.

Tuesday’s clash came as Pakistan’s prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani, traveled to Beijing. Analysts said that visit was meant to signal to the United States that Pakistan saw China as an alternative source of security and economic aid.

On Monday, Senator John Kerry met with top civil and military leaders in Pakistan in an effort to smooth the fraying relations between the two countries in the wake of the American raid by forces that killed Osama bin Laden. The Pakistani Parliament in a closed-door session last week urged the government to renew and revisit its terms of engagement with the United States. It also warned that it might sever supply lines to coalition forces in Afghanistan if there were further unilateral incursions.

Drone attacks, which are operated by the C.I.A., not by the NATO-led coalition force, are highly unpopular in Pakistan. Nationalist and right-wing Islamist political parties regularly denounce the use of drone attacks inside Pakistani territory. Government officials who in the past privately approved the use of drones have lately been joining the chorus of public criticism.

Inter-Services Intelligence, Pakistan’s leading spy organization, also maintains that it has stopped cooperating with the United States in choosing targets for drone attacks.

At the same time, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, the Pakistani Army chief, has resisted American pressure to start a military operation in North Waziristan, a stronghold of the Haqqani network, whose militants cross into Afghanistan to battle American and NATO soldiers.

 

The Lede: Libyan Woman Describes Rape by Qaddafi Forces

 

Eman al-Obeidy, a Libyan woman who burst into a Tripoli hotel packed with foreign journalists in March to say that she had been raped by members of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s security forces, described her ordeal in an interview with Britain’s Channel 4 News conducted in Doha, the capital of Qatar, where she has found refuge.

Ms. Obeidy spoke to Jonathan Miller, one of the reporters who had tried to protect her from Libyan government agents in the Rixos Hotel in March.

Here is video of the interview broadcast by Channel 4 News on Monday night:

In the interview, Ms. Obeidy told Mr. Miller that she had been kidnapped and then raped by a dozen or more men, in part because they could tell from her accent and her identity card that she came from the rebellious east of the country. She said:

During the attack they insulted people from the east. I was asking them, What did I do wrong? I didn’t do anything, all I did wrong was being from the east. That was clearly stated in my I.D.

They told me, ‘Where are the men from the east? Let them come and see what we do to their women. Let them see how we rape their women, and humiliate them.’

They used weapons while having sex with me. Everything they did was bad, and they kept saying, ‘We are the Qaddafis, we will stay in power.’

 

At War: Clues About Qaddafi’s Forces

 C.J. Chivers/The New York Times

MISURATA, Libya — As the forces of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi fled Misurata’s airport and its environs on Wednesday, they left behind signs of both how they survived and how they fought during their weeks working against the city that expelled them.

One set of clues was evident just outside the airport’s gates. The runway is surrounded by stands of olive and almond trees, and many farms. Near one traffic circle, the Qaddafi soldiers had taken shelter inside an opaque green plastic greenhouse.

From a fast-moving car on the nearby road, and likely from the air, the greenhouse looked innocuous enough. But the trash heaps nearby gave it away — someone had been drinking hundreds of liters of bottled water, and had thrown away many ammunition cans, and then, had ditched uniforms and even military boots.

A stop revealed more. Inside the tent, shielded from view, were a few grubby mattresses and cardboard sheets, where soldiers had been sleeping. Many of their blankets had been left behind, too.

C. J. Chivers/The New York Times

And at one end of the greenhouse was a large pile of crates telling more of the war and of how Colonel Qaddafi armed his forces for it. The crates had contained 125-millimeter high-explosive fragmentation rounds for the main guns of T-72 tanks.

Rebels and medical officials in Misurata have said the T-72 tanks at the city’s edge had been firing randomly into the city. Sometimes at night, when the wind died down and noise carried, it seemed they could be heard. A distant boom would sound — the report of an outgoing round. And then an explosion would be heard in the city, often very fast — within four or five seconds.

This was faster than artillery and mortar rounds, which fly in a high, looping arc that consumes time. Tank rounds fly in a much flatter trajectory, and can cover many kilometers in four seconds, though not exactly precisely.

And here were scores of a round that were not designed to fire at other tanks, but at bunkers, structures and people.

The official designation of this round is 3VOF36. It contains a projectile with a high-explosive charge surrounded by a steel case. When it detonates, the projectile breaks into hundreds of what its seller calls “anti-personnel fragments”; in other words, flying bits of jagged steel designed to kill.

The stenciling on the crates, and the paperwork within, told of their provenance. They had been exported from Oktyabrsk, Russia, in late 2002 under a 1999 contract between Rosoboronexport, the Russian state arms-trading agency, and the Libyan government. Under this contract, the Qaddafi military has bought 8,126 cases — a quantity corroborated by both the paperwork and the stenciling on the crates.

null

Who they were intended to be used against no one can say from the evidence available in the tent. But the empty canisters told the rest. They had been used in Misurata, and perhaps for the shelling of the city, by a force that put a greenhouse to a novel new use.

C.J. Chivers/The New York Times

Follow C.J. Chivers on Facebook, on Twitter at @cjchivers or on his personal blog, cjchivers.com, where many posts from At War are supplemented with more photographs and further information.

 

Vote Forces Singapore’s Leader to Reconsider Style

Most parties would be happy to win a 60 percent majority of the vote and 81 of 87 parliamentary seats. But for the People’s Action Party, which is known as the P.A.P. and has governed Singapore almost as a one-party state, the outcome appeared to be a signal that voters were seeking more accountability and responsiveness from their leaders. In the departing Parliament, the opposition holds only two seats.

The results from the election on Saturday raised the possibility of a more active, if still tiny, opposition and of greater give-and-take over issues that have traditionally been decided by a closed inner core of the governing party.

“This election marks a distinct shift in our political landscape which all of us must adjust to,” Mr. Lee said in a televised news conference after the votes were counted. “While the voters have given the P.A.P. a strong mandate, many voters, including some of those who voted for us, clearly expressed their significant concerns both on the issues and our approach to government.”

He added: “Many Singaporeans wish for the government to adopt a different style and approach. We hear your voice. The P.A.P. will learn from this election and put right what is wrong.”

The vote came after an unusually boisterous campaign in which, for the first time, opposition parties were contesting all but one constituency. They drew enthusiastic crowds, with many people energized by newly legalized Internet campaigning that brought a clamor of voices and points of view rarely heard in the tightly controlled city-state.

The People’s Action Party has been in power since independence, and until 1981 there were no opposition members of Parliament. Until now, there had never been more than four opposition members.

The party’s popular vote, 60 percent, represented a steep decline from the previous two elections, down from 67 percent in 2006 and 75 percent in 2001.

“The larger significance lies with the fact that the P.A.P.’s political dominance is slowly being chipped away,” said Eugene Tan, an assistant professor of law at Singapore Management University. “There is a consciousness among Singaporeans that the one-party-dominance system is not sustainable in the long run.”

The vote also reflected the views of a younger generation, confident of its nation’s stability and economic security, that may be seeking what Mr. Tan called “a type of more normal democracy.”

“For younger Singaporeans born after 1965, the Singapore success story of moving from third world to first world in one generation actually has very little traction,” he said. “To them the P.A.P. performance is not what they have done the last 30 or 40 years, but about what it has done in the last five years.”

The founder and architect of Singapore’s success, former Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, was re-elected to Parliament, at the age of 87, in the only uncontested constituency.

Mr. Lee, who holds a cabinet post with the title of minister mentor and is the prime minister’s father, transformed a quiet colonial port into a center of trade and investment that is one of the wealthiest and fastest-growing nations in Asia.

Among the issues that confronted the governing party were voters’ discontent over rising prices, particularly in housing, and a widening income gap that is leaving behind some of those who are less well-off. Many Singaporeans complain about an influx of foreign workers, who now make up one-third of the population of five million.

Political analysts said that election results presented challenges to both sides and that their responses would determine the future shape of power and politics in Singapore.

“The challenge of this for the P.A.P. is whether they are prepared to recognize that enough voters seem to have expressed interest in the idea of checks and balances and political competition, not just with the P.A.P. and P.A.P.-controlled institutions, but against the P.A.P.,” said Garry Rodan, an expert on Singapore at Murdoch University in Perth, Australia.

He said that the opposition parties would be faced with a lack of resources and with legislation that makes it difficult for civil society to connect to political parties and to mobilize as they do in liberal democracies.

The six opposition seats were won by the Workers’ Party, one of six parties that ran against the governing party. In a significant upset, a five-member Workers’ Party slate won a group-candidate constituency over a governing party slate that included two cabinet ministers. One other member of the Workers’ Party was elected in a single-candidate constituency.

In a victory speech, the head of the Workers’ Party, Low Thia Khiang, said, “Your votes tell the government you want a more responsive, inclusive, transparent and accountable government.”

 

Syrian Forces Shoot at Protesters Trying to Break Siege

 

The bloodshed in the besieged town, Dara’a, was the worst episode on another violent Friday. At least 40 people were killed across the country, repeating a cycle that has become a fixture of the most serious challenge to the Assad family’s four decades of dictatorial rule. For weeks, demonstrators have poured into the streets after noon prayers, only to face the determination of the government to disperse them, often with live ammunition.

But the cries of grief in Dara’a and angry chants in dozens of towns and cities on Friday seemed to signal a new dynamic in the uprising. As much as calls for freedom and an end to President Bashar al-Assad’s rule, the protest movement appeared to be feeding off its own symbols and legitimacy, as the demonstrators’ anger grows over the suffering inflicted on Dara’a and the deaths of more than 500 protesters — by activists’ count — since March.

“Stop the siege of Dara’a!” demonstrators shouted in Homs, Syria, near the Lebanese border.

“We cannot challenge the government,” said an opposition figure in Damascus who asked not to be identified. “They’re armed, and we’re unarmed. If they want to kill us, they can kill us. If they want to arrest us, they can arrest us. But no matter how much blood gets spilled and how violent it gets, this is our country, and we’re not giving it up.”

Friday was viewed as a test of sorts for both sides — whether the government might ease its crackdown after killing 112 protesters a week earlier, and whether demonstrators would defy blunt warnings and the threat of more force by returning to the streets. In the end, neither budged, and organizers seemed buoyed by the turnout.

“I’m amazed,” Wissam Tarif, executive director of Insan, a Syrian human rights group, said early in the day. “People are in the streets. I can’t believe it.

“The government is going to have to reconsider their strategy,” he added.

So far, there are few signs of it doing so, despite international condemnation, American moves to place sanctions on Syrian officials and a European effort to impose an arms embargo.

In the uprising’s early weeks, the government tried to stanch the unrest with a mix of mostly hollow concessions and force. Since last week, it has emphasized the latter, an indication underscored by the shootings on Friday.

Some cracks have emerged in its facade, with reports this week of desertions from the military in Dara’a and even fighting among troops, along with the resignations of nearly 300 low-level members of the Baath Party, which has ruled in some fashion since 1963.

Though the government has vast resources to draw on — and bastions of support, particularly among religious minorities — it faces an evolving revolt that it has proven unable to crush and that may be widening.

“There really isn’t a coalesced movement yet or official organizers of the protests,” an Obama administration official said. “It’s almost an organic thing. The more violence happens, the more the cycle continues, the more people hit the street.”

Residents and activists painted a wrenching portrait of the scene in Dara’a, a poor town in southern Syria near the Jordanian border where protests last month helped galvanize nationwide demonstrations.

The military had stormed the town on Monday, effectively occupying it, but the ensuing hardships — shortages of food, water and even baby formula, in addition to dozens of reported deaths — have become a rallying cry of the revolt, unleashing solidarity protests in other towns and neighboring countries.

Inside the town, residents said people were too afraid to go into the streets, or even to attend Friday Prayer. Instead, they shouted “God is great!” from within their homes, the chants growing louder as residents in building after building took up the cry.

As they did, residents said, soldiers fired into the air.

“We are living in complete isolation,” a resident said.

 

Gadhafi Forces Shell Misrata; Further Unrest in Yemen, Syria

。 Edward Yeranian | Cairo ?April 24, 2011

Libyan rebels are seen walking down a street close to a building where forces loyal to Col. Moammar Kadhafi are reportedly held up in Misrata on April 24, 2011

Libyan government forces are keeping pressure on the rebel-held city of Misrata after abandoning most of the positions they held in the city.

Libyan government forces shelled the besieged rebel-held port of Misrata Sunday, a day after officials signaled a change in tactics.? Deputy Foreign Minister Khaled Kaim claimed the army was suspending operations in Misrata and would hand over positions to pro-Gadhafi tribesmen.

"The situation in Misrata will be eased, will be dealt with by the tribes around Misrata and the rest of Misrata’s people, not by the Libyan army, and you will see how they will be swift and quick and fast and the Libyan army will be out of the question, out of the situation in Misrata," said Kaim.

A Libyan opposition leader told Libyan rebel TV, however, that he did not think that tribes around Misrata would fight their countrymen inside the city.? "Some local tribesmen,"? he said, "have personal ties with the Gadhafi regime, but the majority oppose him and won’t fight."

In the capital Tripoli, Gadhafi loyalists fired anti-aircraft guns into the air sporadically, amid reports of NATO airstrikes. The U.S. Defense Department announced an airstrike by a U.S. Predator drone in Libya Saturday. NATO said the unmanned aircraft destroyed a multiple rocket launcher used by pro-Gadhafi forces near Misrata.

Elsewhere in the region, tens of thousands of Yemenis continued to protest against President Ali Abdallah Saleh, a day after he accepted a Gulf Arab initiative that would eventually have him leave office.

Speaking at Yemen’s War College Sunday, President Saleh accused the opposition of trying to create chaos:

He says that the behavior of the opposition has put a stop to economic development in Yemen. He claims the opposition wants to spill blood, create a civil war, and overthrow the legal order, while he opposes violence.

Yemeni politicians and negotiators from the Gulf Cooperation Council say President Saleh has agreed to a GCC proposal for him to step down within 30 days of an accord being signed with the opposition. Saleh ally and deputy information minister Abdou Jundi says the president accepts the plan, but has some conditions:

He says President Saleh accepted the GCC plan in principle, and that this will be in accordance with the constitution, which allows the president to resign to parliament. He insists that starting a dialogue with the opposition is part of the plan.

Many protesters refuse any dialogue with the president and insist on his immediate resignation. They also object to giving the president and his family any immunity from prosecution.

Meanwhile in Syria, thousands of mourners laid to rest protesters shot dead Saturday near the southern city of Deraa. They chanted slogans against the government and against President Bashar al-Assad. Protests were reported in at least six other towns and cities, despite widespread arrests of opposition activists by the government.

 

Syrian Security Forces Fire on Funeral Processions Causing More Bloodshed

 Edward Yeranian | Cairo ?April 23, 2011

A still image taken from an amateur video purportedly taken on April 22, 2011 shows a protester being carried by a group of other protesters during a demonstration in the city of Homs, Syria

Casualties, including at least 12? people dead, are being reported in at several Syrian cities Saturday as witnesses say government security forces opened fire on thousands of funeral goers. The bloodshed comes as U.S. President Barack Obama condemns the use of force against peaceful protesters and accuses Iran of helping in the repression. ?

Funeral goers in the Damascus suburb of Barzeh carry victims of Friday’s violent clashes between security forces and protesters on their shoulders, as the crowd chants slogans against the regime. Videos on Facebook show hundreds of mourners in a tumultuous procession.

Al Jazeera TV showed videos of mourners in Barzeh fleeing as shots were fired near them.?? It also reported that security forces fired indiscriminately on mourners near Izraa, outside the southern city of Diraa, as their procession crossed a highway overpass.

Syrian state media, meanwhile, is claiming that "Facebook, YouTube and Twitter are lying about events in the country."? The Syrian news agency SANA? insists that "outside forces" are waging a "misleading media campaign" and exaggerating about the size of protests. Opposition protesters, for their part, carried banners calling the government press "liars."

Some mourners on Saturday chanted anti-government slogans and repeated their calls for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to resign immediately.

Syrian state TV is reporting that "armed men" fired on the army and security forces in Diraa and elsewhere. It showed funerals of policemen and soldiers it claimed were killed by protesters. The Syrian-government reports accused outside agents of carrying petrol bombs and bottles of blood to "create fictitious stories of violence."? According to the reports, the agents also set fire to buses and attacked fire engines.

Two members of parliament from Diraa resigned to protest the government violence. The mufti of Diraa told al Jazeera TV that the shootings were "unacceptable" and announced he was resigning his post, as well.

Fahd al Masri of the Syrian opposition group Justice and Development says that security forces fired on protesters both on Friday and Saturday.

He said people were killed Saturday in the cities of Diraa, Homs and a Damascus suburb.? He adds that many people were killed and injured and thousands were arrested by state security forces on Friday.? He notes that the government’s announcement it was lifting martial law appears to have changed nothing and that security forces continue to fire on people.

Fouad Ajami, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution in the U.S. western state of California and Director of Middle East Studies at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington. He told VOA that he thinks it was inevitable that the wave of Arab revolutions finally hit Syria.

"This revolution was bound to come to Syria. It was just that it would come to Syria. It was proper to come to Syria. Syria could not be spared. The revolution was bound to come to Syria, because it was in Syria where the terrorist state, the way we know it in the Arab world,? basically took shape in the '70s. So, everything about this revolution perfectly fits Syria," he said.

Ajami points out that unlike Egypt and Tunisia, or even Libya, the presence of many different religious factions in Syria is raising the specter of sectarian violence:

"Once (the revolution) came to Syria, it had to be Syrian. It can't be Egyptian or Tunisian and thus it has to be violent and thus the hidden menace of sectarianism that could devour this revolution. That, at the very end when it's all fought,? it would become what it always was destined to become: a war where (the regime) would rally the Alawis and their allies among the Christians and the Druze and the Ismailis etc. against the vast Sunni middle class," he said.

Ajami also notes the secret police that supports the regime makes the equation in Syria even more volatile than in Libya. Opposition reports say that members of Lebanon’s Hezbollah and of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards have been seen attacking protesters alongside Syria’s secret police. The reports have not been independently confirmed.

U.S. President Barack Obama condemned Syria Friday for using "outrageous force" against anti-government protesters, and said it "must come to an end, now." He also criticized President Assad for "seeking Iranian assistance in repressing Syria’s citizens."

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Blasts Kill 3 NATO Troops in Afghanistan, Joint Forces Kill 3 Top Insurgents

 VOA News ?April 24, 2011

An Army carry team carries the transfer case containing the remains of Army Sgt. John Castro, of Andrews, Texas, at Dover Air Force Base, DE Saturday, April 23, 2011

NATO says roadside bombs in southern Afghanistan have killed three of its personnel, while coalition and Afghan forces in the east have dealt a blow to the Haqqani insurgent group by killing three of its leaders.

The NATO alliance says the roadside bombings killed one of its service members Sunday and two others on Saturday. Another NATO service member died Saturday when a coalition helicopter crashed in the eastern province of Kapisa. The cause is under investigation. The nationalities of the four NATO personnel have not been disclosed.

NATO also confirmed Sunday that coalition and Afghan forces killed the three Haqqani network leaders in a joint operation Friday in eastern Afghanistan's Khost province. The group has close ties to al-Qaida and operates primarily in the Afghan provinces of Khost, Paktika and Paktiya.

The alliance named one of those killed as Salih Khan, whom it said trained bomb makers, organized car bombings and directed logistics and communications for Haqqani insurgents in the Nadir Shah Kot district of Khost. It said Khan led 20 fighters in two attacks on coalition bases in the past week.

NATO said coalition and Afghan troops have captured or killed at least 15 Haqqani leaders and 130 other Haqqani insurgents so far this year.

The coalition also said a combined force captured a Taliban insurgent leader and several of his associates in the northern province of Kunduz on Saturday. It said the senior militant provided weapons to insurgents in Kunduz and was responsible for attacks on multiple targets, including election sites last September.

In other violence, the Afghan government said a gunman assassinated a former top local government official in the southern province of Helmand late Saturday. It said Abdul Zahir was killed in the provincial capital of Lashkar Gah. He had served as the civilian chief of Helmand's Marjah district.

[All VOA blogs...]

Going Green
Watch Rebecca Ward's report on the BP?Gulf oil spill - one year later.

 

Ivory Coast Warlord Pledges to Disarm Forces

ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast (AP) — A renegade warlord here said Saturday that he was ready to lay down his arms as ordered by the new president, but that it would take time.

The warlord, Ibrahim Coulibaly, commands a heavily armed stronghold within Abobo, a poor neighborhood in Abidjan, Ivory Coast’s largest city.

President Alassane Ouattara on Friday ordered Mr. Coulibaly, who led two coups in Ivory Coast, to disarm or be forced to do so.

Mr. Ouattara also ordered all combat units back to their barracks — sending the former rebel forces who installed him in power to their stronghold in the central city of Bouake and the troops who fought for former President Laurent Gbagbo to their old military camps.

Mr. Ouattara said regular and paramilitary police officers would be redeployed to take over security.

“He said lay down your arms,” Mr. Coulibaly said of Mr. Ouattara’s order. “We will lay down our arms. It is not a problem.”

When asked why he had so many weapons in his stronghold, he said: “You don’t dispose of arms in the street. There has to be a strategy.”

Mr. Coulibaly said he wanted his forces to join the new army but was waiting to be invited.

He said he had 5,000 men under his command. But the actual number appears to be fewer than 1,000, based on The Associated Press’s assessments at his Abobo headquarters and at a college there where his commanders were training recruits.

Mr. Ouattara at first tried to distance himself from the former rebels fighting in his name when they began a lightning assault that took them to the gates of Abidjan within days. They had been accused of atrocities during the offensive.

But when his pleas for an international intervention to force Mr. Gbagbo from power went unheeded, he adopted the rebels s his forces and now calls them the Republican Forces of Ivory Coast.

Mr. Ouattara’s orders to disarm were made two days after the former rebels attacked Mr. Coulibaly’s forces at his stronghold but were repulsed.

Meanwhile, thousands of people from the mainly Muslim areas of Abobo cheered on Saturday when a commander told them at a gathering called by forces backing Mr. Ouattara that the war was over.

Sofi Dosso, the leader of the traditional hunters who live in tropical rain forests, said his forces were “ready to help disarm those who disobey the president’s commands.”

All the factions involved in the bloody four-month electoral conflict are accused of killing civilians, looting, burning homes and extorting money. On Wednesday, former rebel forces turned their guns on each other in the southwest cocoa port of San Pedro, forcing United Nations peacekeepers to intervene when they started firing rockets and mortar shells in the city’s downtown.

“We are ready to help disarm those who disobey the president’s commands,” Mr. Dosso said. “But right now, we are needed here to help in the disarmament process because we know the many people who are holding arms illegally.”

 

Libyan Forces Withdraw From a Besieged City, and the Rebels Wonder Why

  Government troops retreated to the outskirts of Misurata under rebel fire? and the opposition claimed victory after officials in Tripoli decided to pull back forces loyal to Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi.

BENGHAZI, Libya — Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s forces have withdrawn from most of the besieged city of Misurata, rebel spokesmen and independent observers said Saturday, but they continued to fire artillery barrages into the heart of the city, with heavy loss of life.

Captured soldiers loyal to Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi in a pick-up truck outside Misurata hospital on Saturday.

Rebel leaders were puzzling over whether the move was an abrupt change in their fortunes, a subterfuge by pro-Qaddafi forces who might return in plainclothes under the guise of a tribal conflict, or a redeployment to new fronts in the mountains along the western border with Tunisia.

Rebels in Misurata, speaking over Internet phone, said that Colonel Qaddafi’s soldiers had disappeared from all but two buildings, where they were besieged while rebels demanded their surrender. Captured Libyan soldiers told Reuters that they had been ordered to withdraw, which would correspond to a plan the government announced Friday to turn the fighting there over to tribal supporters.

NATO announced that the first airstrike by a Predator drone had taken place in the Misurata area, and rebels said it destroyed government tanks stationed at the city’s vegetable market, which had been heavily contested just the day before.

Rebels were encouraged by Saturday’s developments and celebrations broke out in the provisional rebel capital of Benghazi, in the east, but there were no celebrations in Misurata, where hundreds have been killed in two months of violence. On Saturday, doctors said 24 had died and 70 were wounded, most of them civilians caught in artillery barrages.

Libya’s deputy foreign minister, Khaled Kaim, announced Friday night that the Libyan army would turn the battle for Misurata over to area tribes, some of which may have historical rivalries with the people of the city. One rebel said they already feared that the Qaddafi government was trying to inflame tribal animosities by telling residents of the nearby cities of Zliten and Bani Walid that their relatives had been killed by Misurata residents.

Many of the Qaddafi soldiers engaged in the Misurata siege came from the tribes centered in Zliten and Bani Walid, which dominate the Qaddafi military, so substituting armed tribe members for uniformed soldiers may amount to little more than discarding the uniforms.

Such a move could also be a tactic to evade NATO attacks by blending in with civilians. A rebel spokesman in Misurata, identified only as Mohammed for his personal safety, said he had seen three government tanks destroyed by the Predator attack. NATO however said the drone had struck a rocket-launching vehicle.

The Qaddafi forces may also be moving away from Misurata to combat an escalating battle on the mountainous Western border with Tunisia, where for three days rebels have held control of the strategic border crossing of Wazen.

Still, a government siege that has pounded the city with rockets, mortar shells and sniper fire for nearly two months, taking hundreds of lives, appeared to have been broken, and the rebels took the news as an important defeat for Colonel Qaddafi’s forces.

“What we are hearing from Misurata is very positive,” said Jalil el-Gallal, a spokesman for the rebels’ Transitional National Council, their de facto government in Benghazi.

Government soldiers captured in Misurata on Saturday said they had been in the process of retreating when they were taken by rebel forces. “We have been told to withdraw,” a wounded Libyan soldier, Khaled Dorman, told Reuters. “We were told to withdraw yesterday.”

Mr. Gallal denounced the move as an attempt by the Qaddafi government to provoke a tribal conflict, which he said was bound to fail. “Qaddafi is trying to project the view they are leaving it to the tribes, which is a great concern to us,” he said. “It is a familiar tactic that he has used for a long time, but I think people understand now that he wants to start a tribal war.”

Mr. Gallal said that much of the long-range artillery used by the Libyan military against rebel forces in Misurata had been based in neighboring towns like Tarhuna and Zliten, where rival tribes are based, in an effort to stir up tribal animosity.

“It won’t work,” he said. “Any city he will withdraw from he won’t be able to control again. It’s suicidal on his part.”

Rod Nordland reported from Benghazi, Libya, and David D. Kirkpatrick from Tripoli. Scott Sayare contributed reporting from the Dhiba Border Crossing, Tunisia, and Thom Shanker from Washington.

 

Security Forces Kill Dozens in Uprisings Around Syria

  Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesA picture taken by a mobile phone shows anti-government protesters in Banias in northeastern Syria on Friday.

BEIRUT, Lebanon — Security forces in Syria met thousands of demonstrators with fusillades of live ammunition after noon prayers on Friday, killing at least 81 people in the bloodiest day of the five-week-old Syrian uprising, according to protesters, witnesses and accounts on social networking sites.

TimesCast | Syrian Violence Continues Anti-government protesters march during a demonstration following Friday prayers near Damascus, Syria, on Friday.

From the Mediterranean coast and Kurdish east to the steppe of the Houran in southern Syria, protesters gathered in at least 20 cities and towns, including in the outskirts of the capital, Damascus. Cries for vengeance intersected with calls for the government’s fall, marking a potentially dangerous new dynamic in the revolt.

“We want revenge, and we want blood,” said Abu Mohamed, a protester in Azra, a southern town that had the highest death toll Friday. “Blood for blood.”

The breadth of the protests — and people’s willingness to defy security forces who were deployed en masse — painted a picture of turmoil in one of the Arab world’s most authoritarian countries. In scenes unprecedented only weeks ago, protesters tore down pictures of President Bashar al-Assad and toppled statues of his father, Hafez, in two towns on the capital’s outskirts, according to witnesses and video footage.

But despite the bloodshed, which promised to unleash another day of unrest as the dead are buried Saturday, the scale of the protests, so far, seemed to fall short of the popular upheaval of revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia. Organizers said the movement was still in its infancy, and the government, building on 40 years of institutional inertia, still commanded the loyalty of the military, economic elite and sizable minorities of Christian and heterodox Muslim sects who fear the state’s collapse.

Coming a day after Mr. Assad endorsed the lifting of draconian emergency rule, the killings represented another chapter in the government’s strategy of alternating promises of concessions with a grim crackdown that has left it staggering but still entrenched.

“There are indications the regime is scared, and this is adding to the momentum, but this is still the beginning,” said Wissam Tarif, the executive director of Insan, a Syrian human rights group. “Definitely, we haven’t seen the millions we saw in Egypt or Tunisia. The numbers are still humble, and it’s a reality we have to acknowledge.”

The images of carnage marked one of the deadliest days of the so-called Arab Spring, and the coming days may be replete with its lessons. In other places in the Middle East, violence has led to funerals where many more are often killed. The government’s belated attempts at reform, meanwhile, have often simply escalated protesters’ demands.

In that, the government faces perhaps its greatest challenge: to maintain its bastions of support with promises for the future and threats that its collapse means chaos, against the momentum that the vivid symbols of martyrdom have so often encouraged.

“We are not scared anymore,” said Abu Nadim, a protester in Douma, a town on the outskirts of Damascus. “We are sad and we are disappointed at this regime and at the president. Protests, demonstrations and death are now part of the daily routine.”

In a sharply worded statement, President Obama said the “outrageous use of violence to quell protests must come to an end now.” The statement also said President Assad was seeking Iranian help in repressing his people, but did not provide details.

In the capital, a city that underlines the very authority of the Assad family’s decades of rule, hundreds gathered after Friday Prayer at the al-Hassan Mosque. Some of them chanted, “The people want the fall of the government,” a slogan made famous in both Egypt and Tunisia. But security forces quickly dispersed the protests with tear gas, witnesses said. Syria’s second-largest city, Aleppo, appeared to remain relatively quiet.

The government’s determination to keep larger cities somewhat subdued may have led to some of the highest death tolls. Protesters in some towns on Damascus’s outskirts said security forces fired at them to prevent them from marching toward the capital. And in Azra, protesters said, government forces were intent on keeping them from Dara’a, a poor town 20 miles away that helped unleash the revolt in March.

Hwaida Saad contributed reporting from Beirut, Katherine Zoepf from New York, and employees of The New York Times from Beirut and Damascus, Syria.

 

Syrian Security Forces Fire on Mourners in Several Towns

The death toll from the protests on Friday, one of the bloodiest days in the so-called Arab Spring, had risen by Saturday to 109 people, a number that activists said was likely to rise as more bodies were returned to their families. Another group said 114 people had been killed.

The bloodshed on Saturday followed a pattern seen frequently in the tumult that has swept the Arab world. Funerals have often turned to demonstrations, where more have been killed by security forces bent on crushing dissent against authoritarian leaders. While Saturday’s death toll paled in comparison with the number killed on Friday, it suggested that the country might be entering a prolonged period of turmoil as protesters continue to press the greatest challenge to the Assad family’s four decades of rule.

President Bashar al-Assad’s government has struggled to cope with the unrest, offering concessions that would have been startling at one time, while using violence against those who persist in demonstrations. Though the revolt has drawn large numbers into the streets since it started on March 15, it has yet to achieve the critical mass of revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt. However, organizers say they believe the bloodshed may draw more people into the uprising’s fold.

In a possible sign of cracks in the government’s facade, two members of Syria’s largely powerless Parliament resigned on Saturday. The two, Khalil al-Rifai and Nasser al-Hariri, both independent lawmakers from Dara’a, where the uprising started, told Al Jazeera that they were resigning to protest the killing of demonstrators.

Wissam Tarif, the executive director of Insan, a human rights group, said that security forces fired live ammunition at mourners after they buried their dead. The funerals soon became protests, with calls for the fall of Mr. Assad, who inherited power from his father, Hafez, in 2000. Such demands, uttered publicly, were once unheard of and serve as a marker of how outrage is overcoming fear in the repressive state.

Mr. Tarif said 11 people were killed in towns on the outskirts of Damascus, where some of the worst bloodshed was reported Friday: Douma, Barza, Maadamiah and Qabon. Others were reported killed in Azra, but activists had yet to confirm their names.

In Barza, a witness who wished to remain anonymous for fear of reprisal said that at least 1,000 mourners came under fire as they prepared to bury four men and two children, one 7 years old and the other 14. The witness said security forces aimed directly at the mourners, many of whom sought shelter in the nearby Al-Salam mosque.

He said the shooting lasted at least 10 minutes. Religious leaders inside the mosque pleaded on loudspeakers for security forces to stop firing at unarmed protesters and called for medical help for the wounded.

“They shot directly at people, and all hell broke lose,” the witness said. “We could hear voices of children and people screaming frantically. We don’t know how many were killed, but we heard one saying on the phone that four of his neighbors were killed and many were injured.”

In Douma, another town on the outskirts of Damascus, at least 1,500 mourners marched from the main mosque to the cemetery, a witness said. As they approached a government building, police in plain clothes began firing at them, in barrages that lasted three hours.

“I saw people killed in front of me,” the witness said. “People were on the ground wounded, and no could assist them, help them or get to them.”

His voice turned angry. “How much people can take, we don’t know,” he said. “They’re not going to get killed every day and just keep watching. If we’re going to pay with our lives for the president’s reforms, then we don’t want his reforms.”

Friday’s violence started after the noon prayers, when thousands gathered in protest. Their demands have grown since the uprising began: from calls for reform to demands that President Assad step down.

In at least two towns, protesters tore down Mr. Assad’s picture and wrecked statues of his father.

Employees of The New York Times contributed from Beirut, Lebanon, and Damascus, Syria.

 

Security Forces Fire on Protesters in Restive Syrian City

The crowd had gathered to protest a deadly crackdown by the security forces, who activists say killed 14 demonstrators on Sunday. Tensions mounted throughout the day, and at about 2:10 a.m. on Tuesday the forces began firing again, witnesses said.

Shortly before 3 a.m., a woman who lives near the square said by cellphone: “Shooting is heard echoing through the city. The mosques are all calling for help. We fear that many are killed in the square, that it’s a massacre.” By early afternoon on Tuesday, The Associated Press reported, people were staying inside their homes and the streets were largely deserted.

Razan Zeitouneh, an activist with the Syrian Human Rights Information Link in Damascus, said she heard shots over the phone while talking to a distraught friend in the square. He told her that he saw four people killed and dozens injured.

The renewed protests amounted to a rejection of concessions outlined by President Bashar al-Assad in a televised address Saturday, notably lifting the country’s 48-year-old state of emergency by the end of this week.

At the funeral processions in Homs on Monday, mourners in New Clock Tower Square at first offered traditional prayers for the dead. But then protesters began clapping and chanting against Mr. Assad as funeral marchers lofted coffins overhead.

Security forces fired in the air in the afternoon, witnesses said by telephone, but the crowds refused to disperse. At 7:45 p.m. a protester reported that security forces had begun surrounding the square as the crowd chanted, “A sit-in, a sit-in until the overthrow of the regime!”

The activists were calling the square “Tahrir” — the Arabic word for liberation and the name of the square in Cairo where mass protests toppled President Hosni Mubarak in February.

“They want to create a Tahrir-like moment, a watershed event,” said Ammar Abdulhamid, a Syrian opposition leader based in Maryland who is in touch with some of the young activists.

Another human rights activist, Rassem al-Atassy, said by telephone from Homs during the day, “The people are in charge in the city center now.”

Ahmad, 28, a university student at the Homs protest, said: “We people of Homs are calling for three days’ general strike to show our rejection of the cold-blooded killing of peaceful protesters. Homs is boiling and no one can tell you what will happen in the near future.”

Mr. Abdulhamid said the activists in the square were unarmed, but had organized themselves to sleep in shifts, anticipating an overnight confrontation.

Late Monday night, the state news agency, SANA, reported that the Interior Ministry was calling the unrest “an armed mutiny” led by radical Salafi Muslims.

“The ministry added that these armed groups have committed vicious crimes that the law would punish with the strongest penalties,” SANA said. “Those groups aim to create chaos and terrify the Syrian people, exploiting the reform and freedom process launched within a comprehensive program according to specific timetables announced by President Bashar al-Assad.”

Radwan Ziadeh, a Syrian human rights activist who is a visiting scholar at George Washington University, said the ministry’s statement suggested that Syria’s government was planning a showdown with protesters.

“I’m very concerned about the statement,” Mr. Ziadeh said. “This is a justification for what they intend to do in next few hours. This is the green light for armed confrontation.

“I’ve just talked to five or six protesters in Homs, and there are lots of women and children in the square, families, the women making sandwiches. From the minarets they were calling for more to join the demonstration. They estimated there were 50,000 by now.

“But all the communication has been cut now. I lost them.”

Ms. Zeitouneh, of the Syrian Human Rights Information Link, said as many as 20 people might have died in Homs on Sunday. Security forces opened fire on a crowd of protesters with live ammunition and tear gas, said another witness reached by phone.

State media reported that an army officer, Brig. Gen. Khodir al-Tilawi, two of his sons, and a nephew were ambushed, shot to death and brutally mutilated by “armed criminal groups.”

Ms. Zeitouneh also said she had received reports from the coastal town of Latakia that security forces had opened fire Sunday night on protesters there as well. The number of casualties was not immediately known.

Wissam Tarif, executive director of Insan, a Syrian human rights group, said that five died in Latakia.

Human rights activists said on Monday that forces in both Homs and Latakia were arresting wounded protesters inside local hospitals, leading a doctor in Homs to say that as many as a dozen patients in critical condition might have died in detention.

The Syrian protests coincided with new disclosures that in 2005 the United States began to secretly finance some Syrian opposition groups intent on toppling Mr. Assad. The disclosures, in diplomatic cables obtained by WikiLeaks, showed State Department funding for Barada TV, an anti-Assad satellite broadcaster run by Syrian exiles in London, as well as concern by American diplomats in Syria that Syrian intelligence agents began to suspect the financing two years ago.

Liam Stack reported from Cairo, and Katherine Zoepf from New York. An employee of The New York Times contributed reporting from Damascus, Syria, Scott Shane from Washington, and J. David Goodman from New York.