Interpol issues global alert against Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi and 15 others as clashes widen
Day after another, the situation in Libya worsens as clashes between the revolutionist nation and the forces of long-time ruler Muammar Gaddafi widen more and more in the country’s various cities and towns.
However, Friday’s most remarkable development in relation with the Libyan crisis came from outside Libya after Paris-based Interpol delivered a global alert against Gaddafi and 15 members of his inner circle to help police around the world enforce UN sanctions aimed at ending turmoil in the world's 12th largest oil exporter.
INTERPOL ISSUES ALERT
Interpol has issued a global alert against Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi and 15 others, including members of his family and close associates.
Indeed, the global police organization announced it has issued the Orange Notice "in a bid to warn member states of the danger posed by the movement of these individuals and their assets," following a UN Security Council travel ban and asset freeze. The move is also to assist the International Criminal Court investigation into alleged crimes against humanity in Libya, Interpol said in a statement.
The alert means Interpol's 188 member countries will be able to take all necessary measures to protect civilians and to enforce travel bans against all 16 Libyan nationals, as well as the assets freeze targeting six of them. "The individuals subject to the Orange Notice have been identified as being involved in or complicit in planning attacks, including aerial bombardments, on civilian populations."
"As a first priority, we must work to protect the civilian populations of Libya and of any country into which these Libyan individuals may travel or attempt to move their assets," Interpol Secretary General Ronald K. Noble said.
ONE KILLED AS CLASHES WIDEN
Meanwhile, press reports said that Gaddafi’s forces attacked Misrata city held by the demonstrators 150 kilometers (95 miles) west of Tripoli overnight, killing one person.
A witness said thousands of people attended the funeral of the martyrin Misrata on Friday, adding that Libya's third-largest city remained in rebel hands. "I saw two helicopters but I'm not sure that the firing came from them, but in any case we heard shooting with heavy weapons all night," he said.
Misrata came under the protestors’ control some 10 days after the uprising against Gaddafi’s regime began on February 15 and has been the scene of sporadic clashes between the two sides since then.
In other related developments, eastern-based demonstratorss pressed home a westwards push toward Gaddafi's Tripoli stronghold with an attack on the oil town of Ras Lanuf, which lies on a strategic coastal road, claiming to have taken its airport.
In the west, security forces loyal to Gaddafi launched an offensive to retake Zawiyah, a town near the capital that has for days been defying his rule, and residents said 30 civilians had been killed. Among the dead was the town's rebel commander.
The government had claimed earlier the week it was not using military force to retake the held cities although one official did not rule it out if all other options were exhausted.
Earlier, Al-Jazeera reported that fighter reinforcements from the east of the country began arriving in the nearby town of Ajdabiya and arming themselves
Funerals were held in eastern cities of Brega and Benghazi, where Gaddafi’s forces held air raids a day earlier, with mourners shouting “Down with Gadhafi!” and swearing to take vengeance.
However, the air strikes failed to dislodge opposition fighters from the oil-rich area, which lies nearly 800km east of the capital, Tripoli.
Human Rights Watch confirmed at least 14 deaths from the fighting in Brega as of Thursday morning, including a 13-year-old shepherd named Hassan Umran.
In Benghazi, Libya's second city and a stronghold of the opposition, which has been demanding that Gaddafi step down, about 1,000 people turned out to bury six people, AFP news agency reported.
Gaddafi's security forces have reportedly carried out a wave of arrests, killings and disappearances in the city in recent days in order to quell the opposition.
