Uprising in Libya

[CJvR]

Rebels are at the airraid monument where Gadaffi held his speech in february. They have liberated his golf car, golden AK47, fly swatter and his hat. They are kicking his head around (a bronze one from a statue) and they have burnt his famous tent!

[Tribun]

Here some pictures:

A monument that pobably soon will be history:


To be or not to be:


The golf car:

[Sea Skimmer]

This picture is fresh from Tripoli showing what happened at Gaddafi's fortress.
[img]http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/arc ... 0c.jpg[img]

I guess the Rebels finally decided to use the big guns (they surely captured them) and managed to blow open the western gate. Figting is now moving to Baab Aziziya area itself.

I don't think that is a fresh picture, I saw that picture more like several months months ago when NATO heavily bombed the compound on Qaddafi's birthday.

[Sea Skimmer]

Yeah checked up, no NATO air strikes on Tripoli today or yesterday.

[Sea Skimmer]

Qaddafi's hat has fallen to rebel forces
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ItCG_M0bNJQ

[LaCroix]

Qaddafi's hat has fallen to rebel forces

Hmmm. Then the rest can't be far...

[Enigma]

Yeah but I hearing that loyalist forces are attacking the rebels at Qaddafi's compound.

[Sea Skimmer]

They are shelling the compound and hold the zoo and several other compounds in the district, but a whole lot of rebels are attacking them.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amAltBIw ... r_embedded#!

The above video is a little out of date, it appears journalists were able to finally leave the Rixos hotel but it is still held by Qaddafis side. Also a 1.3 million dollar reward has been offered for Qaddafi's head, severed or not, by a Libyan businessmen and the TNC is offering amnesty to anyone who gets him. The rebels also now hold Ras Lanuf, giving them control of all major oil terminals in Libya except Zuwara which is now coming under attack, and are closing up on Sirte from the east and west.

[Sea Skimmer]

With Qaddafi's regime falling apart, those much vaunted, and much questioned as to if they really exist, mercenaries are starting to come out of the woodwork and talk.
http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,881 ... 05,00.html

Wednesday, Aug. 24, 2011
Gaddafi's Fleeing Mercenaries Describe the Collapse of the Regime
By Jovo Martinovic / Montenegro
Right from the start, Mario, an ethnic Croatian artillery specialist from Bosnia, suspected it was a lost cause.

"My men were mainly from the south [of Libya] and Chad, and there were a few others from countries south of Libya," said Mario, who spoke on condition that his last name not be published. A veteran of the wars of the former Yugoslavia, he had been hired by the Gaddafi regime to help fight the rebels and, later, NATO. "Discipline was bad, and they were too stupid to learn anything. But things were O.K. until the air strikes commenced. The other side was equally bad, if not worse. [Muammar] Gaddafi would have smashed the rebels had the West not intervened." (See pictures of the lengthy battle for Libya.)

By early July, Mario said, more than 30% of the men under his command had deserted or defected to the rebel side. NATO missiles scored several direct hits on his forces, causing "significant casualties." At that point in the war, he said, "military hardware stopped having the role it [once did]. We had to use camouflage and avoid open spaces."

Away from the front, at the heart of the regime, mistrust and excess further undermined Gaddafi's hold on power, Mario said. "Life in [Gaddafi's] compound and shelters was so surreal, with partying, women, alcohol and drugs," said Mario, 41. "One of the relatives of Gaddafi took me to one of his villas where they offered me anything I wanted. I heard stories about people being shot for fun and forced to play Russian roulette while spectators were making bets, like in the movies."

Tension between two of Gaddafi's sons contributed to the sense that Gaddafi's cause was doomed. "I noticed profound rivalry between Gaddafi's sons," Mario said, speaking en route from the southern city of Sabha to Libya's border with Niger. "Once, there was almost an armed clash between Mohammed's and Saif [al-Islam]'s men. I saw one group interrogating the other at gunpoint, and then more of the other group arrived fully armed, and it was a standoff for several minutes, with both sides cursing each other." (See portraits of refugees fleeing Libya.)

Mario respected and liked Gaddafi's most prominent son, Saif al-Islam, who in 2009 threw himself a lavish 37th birthday party on the coast of the former Yugoslav republic of Montenegro, one of Europe's newest glamour spots for the superrich. The ties between the Gaddafi family and the former Yugoslavia stretch back to the days of Josep Broz Tito, Yugoslavia's storied communist leader, who was a friend and ally of Gaddafi's. Mario said that Gaddafi had hired several former Yugoslav fighters, most of them Serbs, to help him in his fight against NATO and the rebels. One by one, Mario said, these foreign advisers and commanders left Tripoli. Some senior Libyans joined them.

"I noticed that many Libyans pretended loyalty just out of fear and were just seeking a way to turn against [Gaddafi]," Mario said. "Many officers admitted to me they stood no chance against NATO, and one of them told me he was in touch with the people in Benghazi." Benghazi is the rebel stronghold in the east of the country.

Mario left Tripoli 12 days ago after receiving a warning from a comrade. "Two weeks ago, a friend who brought me here told me I should leave Tripoli, as things were going to rapidly change and that deals have been made," he said. He noticed Gaddafi's South African mercenaries beginning to leave. Mario decided with a fellow mercenary to flee Tripoli. "I tried to get ahold of Saif before that, but he was beyond reach," he said. "Later he called my companion to ask if we needed something and to say that they would win back all of Libya." (See a brief history of Muammar Gaddafi's 40-year rule.)

Another former Yugoslav soldier, a retired general in the old Yugoslav army and a longtime military adviser to Gaddafi, cut things tighter, leaving Tripoli on Aug. 21. The man, who spoke on condition that his name not be published, spoke to TIME as he traveled through Libya toward Tunisia. "Back there is chaos," he said, referring to Tripoli, which was then being overrun by the rebel forces. "The whole system has collapsed. I knew it was coming. I haven't spoken to [Gaddafi] in four weeks. He wouldn't listen."

Like Mario, the former general had sensed that the regime would soon fall. "Everything seemed normal until recently, but we could feel the deal breaking behind the stage," he said. The former general, who had lived in Tripoli and ran a business there for many years, described Gaddafi as a "fool" and compared him to Slobodan Milosevic, the Serbian leader who took on NATO during the 1999 war in Kosovo and ultimately died in a prison cell at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in the Hague. "You can't fight NATO and play a stubborn lunatic like that guy," the former general said.

[Prannon]

This isn't much in the way of content, but to be honest, I think it's appropriate. If the mods disagree, feel free to delete the post.

Useless spam deleted.

[Big Orange]

The heavy fighting in the last 48 hours is now concentrated on Quaddafi's home town of Sirte. NATO air power has been the obvious deciding factor in the sweeping away of a lot of the Qaddafi the hardware and fortified strong points armed with 12.7mm DSHK/M2 heavy machine guns and mortars that would turn most of the rebel forces into paint in a straight fight.

While Qaddafi's men were not exactly boy scouts and stockpiled condoms in advance for the gang raping of defeated rebels, in the last couple of days it's gotten pretty ugly in Tripoli with revenge killings aimed at civilians carried out by psychos in the rebel ranks, making things worse when the civil infrastructure has been disrupted:

Overnight on Thursday 25 August, the rebels attacked the district of Abu Slim in Tripoli, hunting down loyal Gaddafi officials and their families.

France 24 TV correspondent Matthieu Mabin, reporting from Tripoli, provides a particularly chilling account:

"What happened had less to do with fighting than with stamping out the last pockets of Gaddafi faithfuls, or rather the handymen, technicians and low ranking officials employed by the state, most of whom were housed in blocks of flats concentrated in the Abu Slim neighborhood and who lacked the means to get away in order to evade the lethal sanctions of the rebels. What we are seeing today is certainly the saddest phase of the Libyan war, with columns of rebels who are assailing this area, these people, the families who esconced in these tenement buildings.

Our colleagues have just returned after an all-night coverage at the main Tripoli hospital, reporting the arrival of a large number of gunshot victims, including elderly people, women and even children. The CNT has remained completely silent about this. No call to surrender has been issued. We are undoubtedly entering the saddest phase of the conflict and it is likely that the CNT and the rebels will have to account for their abuses [...].

We have reached a degree of cleansing that appears to be totally out of control, mostly at the hands of the gang from Misrata, the martyr city of Libya, which has come all the way to Tripoli to carry out his revenge. "

Link

A hospital at Abu Slim in Tripoli has become pretty infamous as well, with corpses likely from either side of the conflict and also of civilians piled up in the abandoned wards in their many dozens, with no culprits suspected in the mayhem.

[Raj Ahten]

Frankly a lot of the reports coming out of Tripoli in recent days have been quite disturbing. Al Jazeera ran a report about a hospital with bodies piled up in the wards with more bodies in the courtyard. There was something like 7 staff for the whole place and dried blood everywhere. Looked like something out of a horror movie . Meanwhile The BBC has been showing street battles their reporters have been stuck in. So the battle isn't done yet. This may be the bloodiest battle yet as all the loyalists have no where else left to run anymore.