Libya Strikes Fuel Supply in City Held by Rebels

The barrage struck shortly after midnight, when rockets began landing and exploding in several areas of the terminal, officials there said.

At least one rocket hit a set of three mammoth tanks, which ruptured and burst into a fireball. The fire settled into a leaping blaze that towered overheard, visible for miles. Its glow illuminated the eastern section of the city throughout the night. Residents woke to a thick, drifting cloud of black smoke.

The attack on the terminal was another escalation against the besieged city, and the second pinpoint attack by Colonel Qaddafi’s forces in two nights.

Residents woke Friday to the news that Misurata’s port, its only lifeline to the outside world, had been peppered with antitank land mines.

At the fuel terminal, a small contingent of firefighters worked throughout the night and the day trying to contain the fire, which had destroyed all three storage tanks in one section of the terminal, but had not spread.

“We want to protect the other tanks from exploding,” said Mufta Youssef, one of the firefighters, after backing away from the containers’ blackened remains for a break from the heat.

No one was wounded in the attack or the firefighting effort, officials said.

The tanks contained diesel fuel and gasoline — each roughly 6,000 cubic meters, or 1.5 million gallons — said Muftah Bazina, the terminal’s director.

The effect on the city’s energy supply was not immediately apparent. Misurata has been cut off from new sources of fuel since the uprising against the Qaddafi government began in February. But it began the siege with large reservoirs of diesel fuel and gasoline, and so far there have not been shortages.

Several other fuel tanks remained intact, and terminal officials said the rebels’ de facto government would not disclose which tanks were full and which were not, nor would they make any public statements about how much fuel remained in the city.

“The exact information is a secret,” Mr. Bazina said.

He was willing to characterize the situation only in general terms. “We do have fuel,” he said. “But we do not have enough.”

For weeks, the lines at the few gas stations in the city have often stretched to hundreds of cars. But residents and officials have said the lines are caused in part by the small number of stations, which are often closed — not to any shortage of gasoline. Gas prices have remained low, indicating sufficient supply.

Supplies of pressurized cooking fuel, however, recently ran out.

The Qaddafi government has tried striking the terminal with rocket barrages at least three times in the past three weeks, officials said, and in previous attacks had destroyed an administrative building and a warehouse. The attack early Saturday was the first time a fuel storage tank had been hit.

Mr. Bazina and other officials at the port said at least one of the tanks was struck by at least one rocket, and the resulting explosion and heat ignited the others.

The impact craters and twisted remains of other ground-to-ground rockets were visible around the remaining tanks.

The tail section of one variant of a Grad rocket — a cold war-era munitions made in the 1980s in what is now Slovakia, and one of the most common fired on this city — was visibly stuck in the soil near the fire.

Workers at the terminal had also collected two others of the same variant of rocket, including one that had sailed just over another tank and struck the ground beside it without exploding.

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Land Mines Descend on Misurata’s Port, Endangering Libyan City’s Supply Route

 

The land mines were delivered by a Chinese-made variant of a Grad rocket that opens in flight and drops mines to the ground below, each slowed slightly and oriented for arming by a small green parachute, according to an identification of the sub-munitions by specialists who were provided photographs and dimensions of the weapons.

The mines hit the port at 9 or 10 p.m. Thursday, after rockets were heard being fired on the city from the southeast. A short while later, a truck driven by rebels who were patrolling the harbor struck two of them. Both men inside were wounded, according to a port supervisor and one of the victims, Faisal el-Mahrougi, the driver.

Officials and guards said more than 20 mines were distributed in the attack, and remains of at least 13 were observed firsthand. It was not possible to verify an exact number, as many had been destroyed by rebels who, to clear the mines, shot them with rifles, causing them to explode. By nightfall on Friday, the port appeared to have been cleared.

The use of mine-distributing rockets echoed the documented use of cluster bombs here, and underscored anew the Qaddafi government’s efforts to deny the use of the port to the rebels and to international aid organizations. Regarded as highly indiscriminate weapons, land mines are widely banned by the international community, though several nations, including the United States and Libya, have not signed the international convention prohibiting their production and use, and they retain land mines in their arsenals. The convention covers antipersonnel land mines, not land mines designed to destroy vehicles. However, the mine used in this attack, a Chinese Type 84 Model A, shares many of the indiscriminate characteristics of many banned mines.

The use of such mines also introduces a new menace to the city. The Type 84 Model A is fired by a mobile multiple-rocket launcher system that can carry up to 24 rockets containing 8 mines each. The system’s range is slightly more than four miles, according to a publication of Jane’s Information Group.

For months the port in Misurata, on the Mediterranean Sea at the city’s eastern edge, has been essential to the survival of the city. It has been the sole means of resupply and the only point of evacuation for migrant workers and hospital patients, who have been carried to safety by ships, tugs and fishing vessels that have dared enter its channel, at risk of facing a gantlet of fire.

The introduction of what are known as scatterable land mines also marked a fresh escalation of the munitions used by the Qaddafi forces in this siege.

Last month, during the ferocious urban battle for one the city’s main boulevards, the loyalists repeatedly struck the city with Spanish-made cluster munitions. And the city has been pounded by mortar shells, artillery and ground-to-ground rockets throughout.

Rebels have repeatedly spoken of their fears that through shelling or ground attack the loyalists will seize the harbor and try to strangle the city.

This newest threat from Chinese-made mines had not been seen before in this war.

After being released from a cargo canister while the rocket carrying them is in flight, these mines, each weighing roughly seven pounds, fall from the air with legs that extend and join underneath each mine’s body like a spike. This is designed to drive the mine into the soil and stand it roughly vertically — with a shaped charge facing upright.

Each mine has a magnetic proximity fuse set to blast the charge upward into the bottom of any metallic vehicle that passes over it. Each also has an anti-handling device, to prevent removal, and time fuse that causes the mine to self-destruct up to three days after being armed.

The identification was made using a photograph of one of the unexploded mines, along with images of parts of the remnants of several others that were destroyed either by detonating against the truck or by being struck by the rebels’ bullets.

These images were shared with several private organizations, including Human Rights Watch, and with a private-sector ordnance specialist who distributed the photographs to a network of colleagues, who confirmed the munitions’ identification.

The rebels who discovered them said they initially did not know what they were, and they said the mines had been hard to see at night, with their dark green paint. Mr. Mahrougi, the driver whose truck passed over two mines that had settled onto one of the port’s roads, does not remember seeing them as they exploded in rapid succession.

He emerged in stable condition from surgery Friday night for treatment of third-degree burns, a broken left foot and extensive fragmentation wounds to his left arm, leg, abdomen, chest and face.

Mr. Mahrougi had been examining the port’s warehouses and roads after an odd-sounding rocket strike, and amid reports that Qaddafi helicopters had been heard over the city.

“We saw some rockets, and our guards where checking,” a port supervisor said. “And then one of our trucks hit them.”

The official asked not to be identified to protect his relatives in Tripoli from retaliation from the Qaddafi government. According to the lot number stenciled in black paint on one of the mines, the munitions were manufactured in 2009.

Arms sales between China and Libya are not transparent. How and when the weapons were obtained was not immediately clear.

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U.S. Loses Bids to Supply Jets to India

The decision was a blow for President Obama, who had pushed hard for this and other defense deals during his visit to India in November as part of his agenda to deepen and broaden the United States’ relationship with India. The American ambassador to India, Timothy J. Roemer, who separately announced on Thursday that he would resign from his post for personal reasons, said the United States was “deeply disappointed by this news.”

While political and economic relations between India and the United States have been warming for years, American arms makers have struggled to win big contracts here. After decades of frosty relations during the cold war, which pushed India to rely extensively on the Soviet Union for military hardware, many in the Indian defense establishment are still wary of American intentions and United States military aid to Pakistan, India’s main adversary.

The American bid to build the fighters came from Boeing and Lockheed Martin. Boeing had offered its F/A -18 jets, and Lockheed Martin pitched its F-16 planes. But India instead narrowed the list to the Rafale fighter from Dassault and the Eurofighter Typhoon jet made by a consortium of European companies. Russian and Swedish bids were also turned down.

The 126 planes are meant to replace aging Russian jets. A spokesman for the Indian Defense Ministry said the country hoped to make a final decision by the end of March 2012.

Both American companies are also looking to sell other military hardware to India, which unlike much of the Western world has been sharply increasing its defense spending. Some analysts say India could spend $50 billion to $80 billion on equipment in the next five years.

One Indian international affairs analyst, C. Raja Mohan, played down the significance of the American companies’ loss of this deal. He said that the Indian government was buying more from United States contractors than ever before.

“One deal doesn’t make everything,” said Mr. Mohan, a senior fellow at the Center for Policy Research in New Delhi. “There has been a lot of hype about this deal. We are doing things with the U.S. that we never did before.”

But another analyst, Nitin Pai, argued that India’s decision would hurt relations with the United States, at a time when the country needed stronger ties with America to advance its interests in Afghanistan and Pakistan and the United Nations Security Council, on which India is seeking a permanent seat.

“This move will most certainly reduce India’s geopolitical leverage with the U.S. military-industrial complex, at a time when India needs it most,” Mr. Pai wrote on his blog, The Acorn. He added, “Is the United States more likely to be sympathetic to India’s interests after an $11 billion contract — which means much needed jobs for the U.S. economy — is awarded to someone else?”

Dinesh Keskar, president of Boeing’s Indian operation, said that while the company was “obviously disappointed” about not making the cut for the fighter jets, it was “quite excited about the opportunities in India.” He added that the company was seeking a meeting with Indian officials to find out why its planes were not selected.

Boeing said the company and the Indian Air Force were in the final stages of negotiating a contract for C-17 cargo planes that was announced by Mr. Obama and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in November. And it is hoping to win orders for attack and heavy-lift helicopters.

“We are quite engaged with and will continue our partnership with India,” Mr. Keskar said in a telephone interview.

 

Pakistanis, Angered by US Drone Strikes, Block NATO Supply Route

 VOA News ?April 24, 2011

A rally against the U.S. drone strikes in Pakistani tribal areas, Peshawar, April 23, 2011

Pakistanis opposed to U.S. drone strikes on insurgent targets in Pakistan have blocked a road used by the NATO alliance to deliver supplies to neighboring Afghanistan.

Several thousand supporters of a Pakistani party led by former cricket star Imran Khan were staging a sit-in Sunday on the NATO supply route near the northwestern city of Peshawar. They began the protest late Saturday and planned to remain until Sunday evening.

NATO ships much of its non-lethal supplies for forces in landlocked Afghanistan to the Pakistani port of Karachi before delivering them by truck to the Afghan border. Militants often attack the convoys in Pakistan to stop them from reaching U.S.-led NATO forces fighting a Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan.

U.S. drone strikes against Taliban-allied militants in northwest Pakistan have been a source of friction between the two countries. Khan and his supporters at the protest site demanded that the United States stop the missile attacks, saying they say kill innocent Pakistanis.

U.S. officials have never publicly acknowledged the use of drones inside Pakistan, but privately they have confirmed the strikes to various news outlets, saying the operations have killed mostly militants.

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