Libyan rebels say military chief killed

Libya‘s rebels said their military commander was shot dead in an incident that was shrouded in mystery, pointing either to factional infighting within the movement trying to oust Muammar Gaddafi or to an assassination by Gaddafi loyalists.The killing of Abdel Fattah Younes, who for years was in Gaddafi’s inner circle before defecting to become the military chief in the rebel Transitional National Council (TNC), set back a movement that was at last beginning to acquire cohesion as international pressure on the Gaddafi regime intensifies.

Mourners brought a coffin carrying the burned and bullet-riddled body of Younes into the main square of Benghazi, the rebels’ eastern stronghold, on Friday, his nephew told Reuters.

“We got the body yesterday here (in Benghazi), he had been shot with bullets and burned,” Younes’s nephew, Abdul Hakim, said as he followed the coffin through the square. “He had called us at 10 o’clock (on Thursday morning) to say he was on his way here.”

After a day of rumors on Thursday, rebel political leader Mustafa Abdel Jalil said Younes and two bodyguards had been killed before he could make a requested appearance before a rebel judicial committee investigating military issues.

Jalil gave no further details. The subject of the hearing to which Younes was summoned was not immediately known.

“It seems this was an assassination operation organised by Gaddafi’s men. Gaddafi’s security apparatus has fulfilled their aim and objective of getting rid of Younes,” London-based Libyan journalist and activist Shamis Ashour told Reuters.

“By doing that they think they will create divisions among the rebels. There certainly was treason, a sleeping cell among the rebels. Younes was on the front line and was lured to come back to Benghazi and was killed before he reached Benghazi. This is a big setback and a big loss to the rebels.”

Alan Fraser, Middle East and North Africa analyst with London-based risk consultancy AKE, suggested Younes’s killing had more to do with divisions within the insurgency kindled by difficulties in advancing on the battlefield.

“If the rumors that General Younes was feeding information to Gaddafi were there then it would make sense that some rogue elements might attempt to assassinate him,” Fraser said.

Witnesses said Younes’s demise was greeted with jubilation by Gaddafi’s supporters in the Libyan capital Tripoli.

Younes’s relatives vowed allegiance to the rebel political leader. “A message to Mustafa Abdel Jalil: We will walk with you all the way,” another nephew, Mohammed Younes, told a crowd of mourners in the main square of the rebel stronghold of Benghazi in eastern Libya.

Libya first, until God gives us victory or chooses us as martyrs.” Other family members were beside him.

Younes was not trusted by all of the rebel leadership given his previous role in cracking down on anti-Gaddafi dissidents.

But his death is likely to be a severe blow to a movement that has won the backing of some 30 nations but is laboring to make progress on the battlefield.

“A lot of the members of the TNC were Gaddafi loyalists for a very long time. They were in his inner circle and joined the TNC at a later stage,” said Geoff Porter from North Africa Risk Consulting.

The killing coincided with the start of a rebel offensive in the west and further international recognition for their cause, which they hope to translate into access to billions of dollars in frozen funds.

The rebels claimed to have seized several towns in the Western Mountains on Thursday but have yet to make a serious breakthrough. With prospects of a swift negotiated settlement fading, both sides seem prepared for the five-month civil war to grind on into the Muslim holy month of Ramadan in August.

A rebel official said no deal was worth talking about unless it meant Gaddafi and his powerful sons left Libya, while the veteran leader vowed to fight on “until victory, until martyrdom.”

At least four explosions rocked the center of Tripoli on Thursday evening as airplanes were heard overhead. The city has come under frequent NATO bombing since Western nations intervened on the side of the rebels in March under a U.N. mandate to prevent Gaddafi’s forces from killing civilians.

The killing of Younes, who was involved in the 1969 coup that brought Gaddafi to power and then became his interior minister, came after the rebels attacked Ghezaia, a town near the Tunisian border held by Gaddafi throughout the war.

A rebel commander at a checkpoint near Ghezaia told Reuters on Friday that around 100 insurgents had taken control of the town, from which Gaddafi forces had dominated a swathe of the plains below the mountains.

Reuters could not go to Ghezaia to confirm the report, as rebels said the area around the town could be mined. But looking through binoculars from a rebel-held ridge near Nalut, reporters could see no sign of Gaddafi’s forces in Ghezaia.

Juma Ibrahim, a rebel commander in the Western Mountains, told Reuters by phone from the town of Zintan that Takut and Um al Far had also been seized in the day’s offensive.

Rebels have taken swathes of Libya since rising up to end Gaddafi’s 41-year rule in the oil-producing North African state.

They hold northeast Libya including their stronghold Benghazi; the western city of Misrata; and much of the Western Mountains, their closest territory to the capital.

Yet they remain poorly armed and often disorganized.

The fighting has settled into a stalemate in a conflict that Gaddafi has weathered for five months, despite rebel gains, mainly in the east, and hundreds of NATO air raids on his forces and military infrastructure.

A recent flurry of diplomatic activity has yielded little, with the rebels insisting Gaddafi step down as a first step and his government saying his role is non-negotiable.

Western suggestions that Gaddafi might be able to stay in Libya after ceding power appeared to fall on deaf ears.

BENGHAZI/NALUT, Libya (Reuters) – By Michael Georgy and Rania El Gamal(Additional reporting by Samia Nakhoul in London, Hamid Oul Ahmed in Algiers, Missy Ryan and Lutfi Abu Aun in Tripoli, Andrei Khalip in Lisbon, Olesya Dmitracova and Ikuko Kurahone in London, Sylvia Westall in Vienna, Humeyra Pamuk in Dubai and Patrick Worsnip in New York; Joseph Nasr in Berlin, Ahmed Tolba in Cairo; writing by David Lewis and Richard Meares; editing by Mark Heinrich)

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