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Misrata migrants under fire as aid ship docks

04 May 2011 18:17 (UTC +04:00)

Baku â€“ APA. Aid workers scrambled to evacuate hundreds of terrified African and Asian migrants on a rescue ship that docked in the Libyan port of Misrata on Wednesday under lethal shell-fire from forces loyal to Muammar Gaddafi, APA reports quoting â€œReutersâ€.
"The bombing has caused so many casualties among Libyans and people of other nationalities waiting for evacuation," Gemal Salem, a rebel spokesman told Reuters. "So far we have five killed and ambulances are rushing to the scene."
The ship, chartered by the International Organization for Migration, was boarded by 800 migrant workers and people injured in the civil war who have been waiting for days to escape Misrata’s worsening humanitarian crisis.
"The operation is taking place despite the bombing that is apparently going on," Jean-Philippe Chauzy, an IOM spokesman, said. "We will try to finish and leave as soon as possible."
The shelling was also hitting Misrata’s Qasr Ahmad district, a mixed residential and industrial area which houses the iron and steel works in a city that has become one of the bloodiest battlefields in the two-month conflict.
The civil war over Gaddafi’s 41-year rule has split the oil-producing desert state into a government-held western area round the capital Tripoli and an eastern region held by ill-disciplined but dedicated rebel forces.
The insurgents had hoped for a swift overthrow of Gaddafi but his better-trained and better-equipped forces halted the westward rebel advance from their stronghold of Benghazi and forced a standoff in the fighting.
NATO officers met on Wednesday in Brussels to review their operations’ progress, rejecting assessments of stalemate on the battlefield despite their warplanes’ intervention, as nations prepared for a meeting in Rome on Thursday over rebel finances.
On NATO keeping up its pressure on Gaddafi, NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen said: "I don’t sense any fatigue. On the contrary, we have just had a meeting ... and it has been a reaffirmation of the strong commitment to our operation."
Gaddafi’s forces were much weaker now than when NATO began its operation against them, Rasmussen said.
MISRATA HOLDOUT IN CRISIS
The port is a lifeline for Misrata, where food and medical supplies are low and where snipers shoot from rooftops. Other rescue ships are waiting offshore but there was no news of their movements. About 12,000 people have been rescued by 12 ships.
Minesweepers from the NATO coalition whose aircraft have been bombing Libyan government military targets under a United Nations resolution, had been searching the approaches to the harbor since Monday for a drifting Gaddafi forces’ mine.
Libya’s army also fired volleys of rockets at the rebel-held town of Zintan in the Western Mountains, pressing on with a campaign that has forced thousands to flee the country. Rebels said more than 40 Grad rockets hit Zintan late on Tuesday.
Gaddafi, who seized power in a 1969 coup, has not been seen in public since a NATO missile attack on Saturday on a house in Tripoli, which killed his youngest son and three grandchildren. Officials in Tripoli said he was in good health.
U.S. intelligence officials believe Gaddafi is alive, CIA Director Leon Panetta said. "(The) best intelligence we have is that he’s still alive," Panetta told NBC News.
Vowing to fight to the death, Gaddafi has not followed the examples of leaders in Egypt and Tunisia, who stepped down as a tide of popular unrest rolled across the Arab world.
The U.N. refugee agency UNHCR said an exodus from the Western Mountains region had resumed, with Libyan families fleeing into southern Tunisia.
"This past weekend, more than 8,000 people, most of them ethnic Berbers, arrived in Dehiba in southern Tunisia. Most are women and children," UNHCR spokesman Adrian Edwards told a news briefing in Geneva. Tens of thousands have already fled.
The Dehiba crossing point has changed hands several times in the last week, with fighting spilling over onto Tunisian soil.
Meanwhile, more people have been fleeing Libya by sea to Italy, after a 10-day break due to bad weather.
While a few rebel pockets such as Zintan and Misrata resist Gaddafi’s forces in western Libya, in the largely rebel-held east the most pressing need is for cash to try to restore infrastructure and establish a viable administration.
Rebels say they expect up to three billion dollars in credit soon from Western governments to feed and supply their territories in the east and support their campaign.
With Libya’s economy in turmoil, funds to pay for food, medicine and the state salaries on which most people depend are running low.
Securing financing for rebels and facilitating contacts with defectors will be the focus of Libya talks in Rome on Thursday, French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said.
Juppe told France 24 television the meeting of the so-called "Contact Group" on Libya, including Western and Middle Eastern countries, the United Nations, the African Union and the Arab League, would discuss setting up a financing mechanism.
"It’s not easy. There are Libyan assets that are frozen and for legal reasons unfreezing them is difficult," Juppe said.
Juppe said another aim of the Rome meeting was to build contacts with defectors from Gaddafi’s government and officials who want to leave it. "There are a lot of officials from Tripoli who want to talk. We are going to try to coordinate," he said.
The revolt in Libya is the bloodiest yet against long-entrenched rulers common across the Middle East and North Africa. The Arab Spring has seen the overthrow of the veteran presidents of Tunisia and Egypt -- Libya’s western and eastern neighbors.