By the CNN Wire Staff
August 21, 2011 5:42 p.m. EDT

Libyan rebel fighters have captured Saif al-Islam Gadhafi, the son of longtime strongman Moammar Gadhafi, a top rebel official said Sunday

Tripoli, Libya (CNN) — Saif al-Islam Gadhafi, a son of Libya’s ruler Moammar Gadhafi and a top official in the regime, has been captured by opposition forces, a rebel official said Sunday night.

Ali Said, general secretary of the Benghazi-based Transitional National Council, said that the arrest had taken place in Tripoli. The head of the same rebel group also confirmed the capture in an Al Jazeera interview. There was no immediate reaction from Libyan government officials to the report.

A day earlier, Saif al-Islam — who had emerged as a leading spokesman for the regime since the unrest began in February — had laughed off reports of rebels taking Tripoli and claimed that they were losing every battle.

But this account ran counter to reports from CNN reporters, witnesses and rebel officials on the ground. A NATO spokesman, in fact, said earlier Sunday that Moammar Gadhafi’s “regime is crumbling.”

But in an audio address broadcast Sunday on Libyan state television, the longtime Libyan ruler remained defiant in urging his countrymen to join him to stop “colonizers” and predicting an imminent “victory.”

“I am with you in this fight. We will not give up,” Gadhafi said, speaking after the rebels’ Transitional National Council political affairs chief Faithi Baja claimed that fighters were “inching” toward the leader’s compound.

“The colonizers are trying to colonize the city of Tripoli, so they come with their army to invade our beloved Libya,” Gadhafi said, “but we will not allow them to do so until the last blood drops from every man and woman.”

But NATO — which, under a U.N. Security Council resolution authorizing force to protect Libyan civilians, has conducted 7,549 strike sorties in Libya since the end of March — said that the conflict’s end is near.

“The territory (Gadhafi) controls is shrinking fast, his closest allies are packing their bags, and the people of Tripoli are rising,” said NATO spokeswoman Oana Lungescu. “The sooner he realizes he cannot win, the better — so that the Libyan people can be spared further bloodshed and suffering.”

Gunfire crackled and explosions rocked the capital Sunday night, as the six-month-long conflict finally approached Gadhafi’s doorstep. Musa Ibrahim, from the Libyan government, told reporters just after 11 p.m. Sunday local time that some 1,300 people had been killed and about 5,000 wounded in fighting in the previous 12 hours.

“The city has been turned into hellfire,” he said.

Col. Roland Lavoie, a NATO spokesman based at the Joint Forces Command in Naples, Italy, said the situation was “very dynamic and very tense” Sunday after a spate of mostly small-scale skirmishes in downtown Tripoli and near the sea. While there was no sense of massive encounters, there were large movements of troops by both sides outside the city.

“Gadhafi is clearly losing his capabilities, and I think we all know how this will end. We just don’t know when,” said Lavoie. “He still has some command and control, as we saw a SCUD missile fired yesterday, so let’s not conclude it is over.”

One fierce gun battle broke out Sunday evening near the hotel where many international reporters were stationed in Tripoli. Many government officials packed their suitcases and left the hotel earlier in the day.

Musa Ibrahim, a government spokesman, told CNN on Sunday that “more than 65,000 professional men” are fighting in Tripoli, with thousands more flooding in to help defend the regime, and added that they “can hold for much longer.” He acknowledged “continuous fighting” in the city, predicting a “humanitarian disaster” unless an immediate ceasefire is called.

“It’s not about who will win,” he said. “The world needs to hear this message, that a massacre will be committed in Tripoli if one side wins now.”

The spokesman denied an Al-Arabiya report that Gadhafi’s guard had surrendered, calling it “false information.”

Rebels moved truckloads of ammunition on roads toward Tripoli on Sunday after seizing an ammunition depot once held by Gadhafi’s forces.

Rebel fighters told CNN they controlled Zawiya and had pushed Gadhafi’s forces more than 15 miles outside the city — and 15 miles west of Tripoli. But Gadhafi’s forces continued firing into Zawiya from a distance.

The opposition also claimed control of a major oil refinery and cut off a key coastal road outside the city, a major supply route to the capital.

Libyan state television reported Sunday that dozens of armed rebels were arrested south of Zawiya, and their weapons were seized.

Some areas of eastern Tripoli, including the suburb of Tajoura, were out of government control Sunday, according to a Libyan government official who asked not to be named. Rebels set car tires afire along barricades there, the official said.

The official said 65,000 troops loyal to Gadhafi were ready to defend Tripoli, and warned that a massacre would occur if NATO continued to back rebel efforts.

Aref Ali Nayed, an ambassador in the United Arab Emirates for the Libyan rebels’ Transitional National Council, said opposition forces were calling Sunday “Day 1.”

“The reason we declare it ‘Day 1’ is because we feel Gadhafi is already finished. He is already finished, most importantly, in our hearts,” he said. “We no longer fear him.”

Jumma Ibrahim, a rebel spokesman from the western mountain region around Zintan, claimed opposition fighters had taken control of the main intelligence operations building in Tripoli.

He also said some Libyan army personnel had defected and joined the rebels in the area of the capital’s airport, which he claimed the rebels took over.

But Musa Ibrahim, the government spokesman, denied that the airport had switched hands, insisting all of Tripoli was safe and under the control of Gadhafi’s forces.

CNN could not immediately confirm whether rebel fighters had taken control of any parts of the city, including the airport. But network staffers on the ground reports that this weekend’s fighting appears to be among the most intense yet in Tripoli.

The fighters will continue to get significant support from NATO, said Lungescu, the alliance spokeswoman. NATO made 22 “key hits” in the Tripoli area Saturday, including on several military facilities, with Lavoie saying the alliance conducted more strikes Sunday to maintain pressure on Gadhafi’s forces.

Ibrahim, the government spokesman, blamed NATO for the conflict and appealed for a cease-fire.

“Every drop of Libyan blood shed by these rebels is the responsibility of the Western world, especially NATO’s countries,” he said. “We hold (U.S. President Barack) Obama, (British Prime Minister David) Cameron and (French President Nicolas) Sarkozy morally responsible for every single unnecessary death that takes place in this country.”

But Lungescu, the NATO spokeswoman, told CNN on Sunday that the Gadhafi regime is to blame for all the bloodshed over the last six months.

“What we’ve seen consistently, systematically and brutally are attacks by the Gadhafi regime (on civilians),” she said. “NATO has consistently defended the U.N. mandate, and we have saved countless lives.”

Officials briefed Obama on the situation in Libya Sunday morning and the president will continue to receive updates, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said.

“Anti-Gadhafi forces have had momentum on their side for some time,” a senior Obama administration official said Sunday. “What we’re seeing is further evidence of their sustained persistence.”

A Maltese ship seeking to evacuate foreign nationals from Libya on Sunday came under heavy fire when a rebel-controlled ship ambushed it near the Libyan coastline in an apparent hijack attempt. As the captain tried to steer toward Tripoli’s port, Gadhafi forces began firing at the rebels, leaving the Maltese ship in the crossfire.

No injuries were reported, but the Maltese ship was forced to turn around. The foreign nationals remained stranded in Libya.

In the rebel hub of Benghazi, meanwhile, CNN iReporter Sammi Addahoumi showed video of large, boisterous crowds in the city’s Freedom Square reacting as reports of the developments played on a large screen.

“The spirts are quite high,” said Addahoumi, a 28-year-old deli manager from South Carolina who said that his father fled Benghazi decades ago. “Everyone is expecting Tripoli to fall.”

In his speech on state television Sunday, though, Gadhafi said the rebels — whom he described as “infidels,” “traitors” and “gangsters” — would fail and vowed not to back down.

“This is the hour of victory,” he said. “This hour is the hour of defiance.”

CNN’s Raja Razek, Jomana Karadsheh, Matthew Chance, Sara Sidner, Christine Theodorou, Kamal Ghattas, Greg Botelho, Mark Phillips, Kareem Khadder, Roba Alhenawi and Barbara Starr and journalist Mike Mount contributed to this report.

http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/africa/08/21/libya.war/index.html?hpt=hp_t1

 

Little Resistance as Rebels Enter Tripoli

By KAREEM FAHIM

Published: August 21, 2011

TRIPOLI, Libya — Rebels surged into the Libyan capital Sunday night, meeting little resistance from troops loyal to Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi and setting off raucous street celebrations by residents hailing the end of his 42 years in power.

The rebel leadership announced that insurgents had captured Seif al-Islam el-Qaddafi, Colonel Qaddafi’s son and heir apparent. While that could not be confirmed, the rebels raced through part of the capital city with apparent ease, and NATO and American official made clear that they expected that control of Tripoli, which had been the final stronghold of the longtime Libyan leader, was now in doubt.

“Clearly the offensive for Tripoli is underway,” State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland said in a statement. The statement said “Qaddafi’s days are numbered” and urged the rebel leadership to prepare for a transfer of power and “maintain broad outreach across all segments of Libyan society and to plan for a post-Qaddafi Libya.”

After six-months of inconclusive fighting the assault on the capital unfolded at a rapid pace, with insurgents capturing a military base of the vaunted Khamis Brigade where they had expected to meet fierce resistance, and then speeding toward Tripoli and then through several neighborhoods unopposed.

A separate group of rebels waged a fierce battle near the Rixos Hotel, a bastion of Qaddafi support near the city center. It was there that a team of rebels claimed to have captured Seif Qaddafi.

Earlier in the day, protesters took to the streets and cells of rebels inside Tripoli clashed with Qaddafi loyalists, opposition leaders and refugees from the city said. Fighting had been heavy in the morning, but by midnight Colonel Qaddafi’s forces had withdrawn from many districts without a major battle.

A rebel spokesman said insurgents had opened another line of attack on Tripoli by sending boats from the port city of Misrata to link up with fighters in the capital. It was not clear how many fighters were involved in that operation.

Colonel Qaddafi issued an audio message played over state television, his second in 24 hours, saying that he would stay in Tripoli “until the end” and calling on his supporters to help liberate the capital from a rebel offensive. He said he remained in Tripoli but nothing in the scratchy message provided evidence of his whereabouts.

“The time is now to fight for your politics, your oil, your land,” Colonel Qaddafi said. “I am with you in Tripoli — together until the ends of the earth.”

Moussa Ibrahim, a government spokesman, issued press statements through the night, saying more than 1,300 people had died in fighting in the city but that government troops remained in control.

But the turmoil inside Tripoli and the crumbling of defenses on its outskirts suggested a decisive shift in the revolt, the most violent of the Arab Spring uprisings.

NATO troops continued close air support of the rebels all day, with multiple strikes by alliance aircraft helping clear the road to Tripoli from Zawiyah. Rebel leaders in the west credited NATO with thwarting an attempt on Sunday by Qaddafi loyalists to reclaim Zawiyah with a flank assault on the city.

While rebels expressed hope that Colonel Qaddafi’s forces were losing their will to fight, support for the government could remain strong inside some areas of Tripoli. Analysts said the crucial role played by NATO in aiding the rebel advance in the relatively unpopulated areas outside the capital could prove far less effective in an urban setting, where concerns about civilian casualties could hamper the alliance’s ability to focus on government troops.

Most of the recent engagements between government and rebel forces have also involved relatively light fighting, and it was unclear how rebel forces, largely untrained and inconsistently commanded, would fare in intense urban warfare if loyalist troops put up a robust defense of Tripoli.

A senior American military officer who has been following the developments closely and who has been in contact with African and Arab military leaders in recent days, expressed caution on Sunday about the prospects for any imminent fall of the Qaddafi regime. Even if Colonel Qaddafi is deposed in some way, the senior officer said, there was still no clear plan for a political succession or for maintaining security in the country.

“The leaders I’ve talked to do not have a clear understanding how this will all play out,” said the officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the diplomatic delicacies surrounding the issue.

“Trying to predict what this guy is going to do is very, very difficult,” the officer said, referring to Colonel Qaddafi.Of particular note on Sunday, the rebels seemed to meet little resistance from the 32nd Brigade, a unit that NATO had considered one of the most elite in Libya and commanded by Khamis Qaddafi, one of the leader’s sons. The so-called Khamis Brigade was one of the crucial units enforcing the defense lines around the capital, extending about 17 miles outside Tripoli to the west and about 20 miles to the south.

Rebels said those points had been breached by Sunday afternoon despite the expectation that Colonel Qaddafi would use heavily armored units and artillery to defend them. It was unclear whether the government troops had staged a tactical retreat or been dislodged by NATO strikes.

After a brief gun battle, rebels took over one of the brigade’s bases along the road to Tripoli. Inside the base, rebels raises their flag and cheered wildly. They began carting away stores of weapons, including rocket-propelled grenades and mortars.

While the bodies of several dead loyalist soldiers were left on the ground in the base, it appeared the troops there had retreated rather than being forced out in battle. At least one structure suffered significant damage from NATO bombs.Earlier Sunday, rebels portrayed the uprising inside Tripoli as a sign that the end of the Qaddafi regime was near.

“We are coordinating the attacks inside, and our forces from outside are ready to enter Tripoli,” said Anwar Fekini, a rebel leader from the mountainous region in western Libya, speaking by telephone from Tunis. “If you can call any mobile number in Tripoli, you will hear in the background the beautiful sound of the bullets of freedom.”

Phone calls to several Tripoli residents in different neighborhoods confirmed that gunfire and explosions were widespread. And there were reports of frequent NATO jet flights and airstrikes — a common accompaniment to the drumbeat of the rebel advance in the past week.

While American officials say they are unsure how the battle for Tripoli will play out, they say they are preparing contingency plans if and when Qaddafi’s regime falls to help prevent the vast Libyan government stockpiles of weapons, particularly portable antiaircraft missiles, from being dispersed.

Untold numbers of the missiles, including SA-7’s, have already been looted from government arsenals, and American officials fear they could circulate widely, including heat-seeking antiaircraft missiles that could be used against civilian airliners. “What I worry about most is the proliferation of these weapons,” the senior military officer said, noting that the United States has already been quietly meeting with leaders of Libya’s neighbors in Africa’s Sahel region to stem the flow of the missiles.

The officer said that small teams of American military and other government weapons experts could be sent into Libya after the fall of Qaddafi’s regime to help Libyan rebel and other international forces secure the weapons.

Colonel Qaddafi has issued several audio broadcasts in recent days claiming he will turn back the rebel advance. But he has given no clear indication of where he might be speaking from, a topic of increasing speculation as rumors have swirled that he is preparing to flee, or has already left Libya.

If Colonel Qaddafi’s location remained unknown, it became increasingly clear that even his most senior aides were making exits of their own.

The Tunisian state news agency reported Saturday that Libya’s oil minister, Omran Abukraa, had sought refuge in Tunisia after leaving Tripoli on what was ostensibly a business trip abroad. If confirmed, his defection would be the third of a senior government official in the past week.

Abdel Salam Jalloud, a former Qaddafi deputy, was reported to have defected Friday. A senior security official, Nassr al-Mabrouk Abdullah, flew to Cairo with his family on Monday.

Mustafa Abdel-Jalil, the chairman of the rebel government, the National Transitional Council, said that he hoped Colonel Qaddafi and the rest of his inner circle would follow. “That would be a good thing that will end the bloodshed and help us avoid material costs,” he said. “But I do not expect that he will do that.”

After reports of the Tripoli fighting began, some residents said that a group of rebel fighters had infiltrated the city from the east and were spearheading the uprising, surprising the pro-Qaddafi forces who had fortified for an attack from the western approach guarded by Zawiyah. Residents added that in recent weeks rebels had also smuggled weapons into the city by boat to the beaches east of Tripoli to prepare. Their claims could not be independently confirmed.

The latest phase of the battle began after rebels on Saturday drove the remaining loyalists troops out of Zawiyah, the strategic oil refinery town 30 miles west of Tripoli. After a week of heavy fighting there, residents began to celebrate in the main square.

The Arab news network Al Jazeera reported that Zlitan, a crucial Qaddafi barracks town east of Tripoli, also had fallen to the rebels. They captured Gharyan, the gateway to the south, last week.

Farther east, the rebels claimed to have seized the residential areas of the oil port of Brega, a prize that has changed hands many times since the uprising began.

A senior American official said Colonel Qaddafi’s days “are numbered.”

“It is clear that the situation is moving against Qaddafi,” Jeffrey D. Feltman, an assistant secretary of state, said after meeting rebel leaders in Benghazi, the rebel capital. “The opposition continues to make substantial gains on the ground while his forces grow weaker.”

Rebel leaders were optimistic. “The end is very near” for Colonel Qaddafi, said Mr. Abdel-Jalil, the leader of the rebel’s governing council. “We have contacts with people from the inner circle of Qaddafi,” he said. “All evidence is that the end is very near, with God’s grace.”

Amid worries from the West and humanitarian groups that rebel fighters might seek revenge against Qaddafi supporters, the rebels’ National Transitional Council said Saturday that it was reissuing a booklet reminding its mostly novice fighters about the international laws of war.

But the battle was hardly over. In the past six months, the rebels have frequently proven unable to hold captured territory, sometimes keeping it no longer than a few days. Government forces were still fighting fiercely outside Zawiyah, and in Brega they controlled the oil refinery.

Eric Schmitt contributed reporting from Washington.