Mubarak to be moved to military hospital

                     Mubarak to be moved to military hospital                 

Authorities say Mubarak will eventually be moved to a prison in Cairo where his sons are also held [AFP]

Egypt's prosecutor general ordered that Hosni Mubarak, the former president, be moved from his hospital in a Red Sea resort town to a military medical facility, according to prosecutor's website.

Sunday's announcement is the latest in a string of setbacks for the former strongman, who is held on suspicion of corruption and violence against protesters in the uprising that toppled him.

Mubarak was originally supposed to be moved to Cairo's Tora prison hospital, but it was deemed not yet ready to receive him, said a spokesman for Prosecutor General Abdel-Maguid Mahmoud.

Instead the former president will stay in a military hospital until the prison facility is ready, said the spokesman in a statement posted on the prosecutor's Facebook page.

"The public prosecutor addressed the interior minister, informing him to take the necessary steps to move the former president ... to a military hospital, to implement a custody order," the statement said.

A report by a top forensic medical official said Mubarak could be moved without endangering his health, as long as he was given appropriate medical treatment.

Mubarak's two sons are also being investigated for corruption allegations, and for their role in the shooting of protesters during the 18 days of demonstrations against their father's rule.

Mubarak is scheduled to stay in custody until April 28, but his detention will most likely be extended.
Thousands of Egyptians had demanded that Mubarak be placed in a prison compound, where his sons and many of his former ministers and officials are housed, instead of staying in hospital.

The detention of Mubarak, his sons and many of their top allies was a key demand for the pro-democracy protesters.

NATO air strike pounds Gaddafi compound | NATO hits Gaddafi's compound| Air strike destroys buildings in Gaddafi's compound

NATO air strike pounds Gaddafi compound

Libyan officials claim 45 people were injured, 15 seriously, in the late-night NATO air strike [REUTERS]

NATO forces flattened a building inside Muammar Gaddafi's Bab al-Aziziyah compound early on Monday, in what a press official from Gaddafi's government said was an attempt on the Libyan leader's life.

Firefighters were still working to extinguish flames in a part of the ruined building a few hours after the attack, when foreign journalists were brought to the scene in Tripoli.

The press official, who asked not to be identified, said 45 people were hurt in the strike, 15 of them seriously, and some were still missing. That could not be independently confirmed.

Gaddafi's compound has been struck before, but NATO forces appear to be stepping up the pace of strikes in Tripoli in recent days.

A target nearby, which the government called a car park but which appeared to cover a bunker, was hit two days ago.

The United States, Britain and France say they will not stop their air campaign over Libya until Gaddafi leaves power.

Washington has taken a backseat in the air war since turning over command to NATO at the end of March but is under pressure to do more. This week it deployed Predator drone aircraft, which fired for the first time on Saturday.

Misurata bombarded

Government troops bombarded the western rebel bastion of Misurata again on Sunday, a day after announcing their withdrawal following a two-month siege.

A government spokesman said the army was still carrying out its plan to withdraw from the city, but had fired back when retreating troops were attacked.

"As our army was withdrawing from Misurata it came under attack by the rebels. The army fought back but continued its withdrawal from the city," Mussa Ibrahim told reporters.

The government says its army is withdrawing from the city and sending in armed tribesmen instead. Rebels say the announcement may be part of a ruse to mask troop movements or stir violence between rebels and locals in nearby towns.

Rebel leader Mustafa Abdel Jalil told a news conference in Kuwait that the Gulf state had agreed to contribute $177m to his rebel council to help pay workers in the east of the country under its control.

"This amount will help us a lot in paying the salaries of employees who did not [get paid] for two months," he said.

"We are capable of only covering 40 per cent of this amount. We are in need of urgent aid."

The rebels have been seeking international recognition as well as material support from the West and the Arab world.

They have been unable to advance from eastern Libya as they fight back and forth with Gaddafi's troops on the coastal road between the towns of Ajdabiya and Brega, hampered by their lack of firepower, equipment and training.

Libya's growing humanitarian crisis 

Libya's growing humanitarian crisis 

Humanitarian coordination in Libya   

Humanitarian coordination in Libya   

Deaths reported in Syrian protests Gunfire and deaths reported amid more protests in Syria but identities of perpetrators and victims remains unclear.

Deaths reported in Syrian protests

Gunfire and deaths reported amid more protests in Syria but identities of perpetrators and victims remains unclear.

Boys hold a banner in the port city of Baniyas. Protests took place in several cities across Syria on Sunday [Reuters]

At least five people are reported dead amid fresh protests near the restive Syrian city of Homs, but the identities of those killed remains unclear.
Government sources told Al Jazeera that two policemen were killed in the town of Talbiseh on Sunday while other reports claimed protesters had been killed.
Our correspondent Cal Perry, in Damascus, reported that more than a dozen people had been wounded in what officials said was a "co-ordinated attack from both rooftop sniper fire and fire from the ground".
He said it was unclear who was behind the firing. Officials blamed "foreign elements" while protesters said it was security forces dressed in civilian clothes.
"The situation is incredibly chaotic", he said.
The official news agency SANA reported that one policeman was killed in Talbiseh when "a group of armed criminals opened fire" on security personnel.

It said a military unit "returned fire" and killed three members of the armed groups and wounded 15.
Online activists told Al Jazeera that two civilians had been killed and many injured in Talbiseh. They said security forces opened fire as mourners gathered for a funeral for a person killed in protests a day earlier. Many people were arrested, they said.
They also said five protesters, including a 14-year-old boy, were killed when security forces and "government thugs" broke up a rally in Homs, using live ammunition.
Officials said "unknown assailants" were shooting from vehicles at people on the streets in Homs.
Al Jazeera could not independently verify the differing accounts.
Protesters beaten
Earlier on Sunday, about 300 anti-government protesters took to the streets in the southern city of Suweida. Witnesses said they were attacked and badly beaten by government supporters.
Mazen Darwish, an activist in Damascus, said two people had been injured and taken to hospital.
"Protesters were sitting in the square, chanting slogans for political freedom," he told Al Jazeera. "After a few minutes, people in civilian clothes attacked them."
There were also reports of demonstrations in Aleppo, Syria's second biggest city, in the coastal city of Baniyas, and in Homs.
Suhair Atassi, a rights activist, said on Twitter that 400-500 people were protesting in Aleppo, chanting slogans for national unity.
In the town of Hirak, outside the southern city of Daraa, thousands of mourners at the funeral of a soldier reportedly chanted slogans calling on the president to step down, Reuters news agency reported.

A relative of the 20-year-old soldier said his family was told he was accidentally electrocuted at his military unit
near Damascus but mourners believed he had been tortured by security forces.
Sunday's demonstration came a day after Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian president, said the country's decades-long emergency laws would be lifted within a week and also promised a number of other reforms.
Activists had called for protests across Syria on Sunday, which is Syria's Independence Day, commemorating the departure of the last French soldiers 65 years ago and Syria's proclamation of independence.
The Damascus Declaration, an opposition umbrella group, called for peaceful protests in all Syrian cities and abroad to "bolster Syria's popular uprising and ensure its continuity".
'Blood of martyrs'
In a statement posted on its website, the Damascus Declaration said the government was responsible for killing and wounding hundreds of Syrians who have been calling for their legitimate rights in the past month.
"The regime alone stands fully responsible for the blood of martyrs and all that will happen next in the country,'' the statement said.
Other activists also called for protests through social network sites.
Assad promised on Saturday to end the emergency law, which had been a key demand of the protests which began one month ago. But the president coupled his concession with a stern warning that further unrest will be considered sabotage.

An activist posted this picture online, saying it showed a protest in Baniyas on Sunday

George Jabbour, a former member of the Syrian parliament who was an adviser to Assad's father, the former president Hafez al-Assad, said he thought the proposed reforms should be enough to quell anti-government demonstrations.
"It was greeted with, I suppose, satisfaction, by most people, maybe all. I'm glad he [said in his speech] that the lifting of emergency law will strengthen rather than weaken the security of Syria," he told Al Jazeera.
But our correspondent said what is more likely to keep protesters from the streets is gangs of armed pro-Assad protesters.

"The security forces by and large have been replaced by pro-Assad individuals who carry various instruments of destruction - pipes, sticks, at times AK47s," he said. 

"On Friday, when I drove through a section of Damascus, there were a variety of individuals, two dozens perhaps, standing in the streets with pipes, and it was clear they were doing that to send a message - if you're going to protest, you're taking the risk to run into these forces and being beaten up."
Relatives' release urged
Within hours of Assad's speech on Saturday, about 2,000 protesters staged a sit-in in the suburb of Douma, demanding the release of relatives arrested on Friday during a major day of nationwide protests, activists said.
The official SANA news agency also reported around 2,000 people demonstrated in the southern protest hub of Daraa late on Saturday, chanting slogans for "freedom" and the lifting of emergency laws.
The laws - in force since 1963 - restricts public gatherings and movement, authorises the interrogation of any individual and the monitoring of private communications and imposes media censorship.
Assad has said armed gangs and a "foreign conspiracy" were behind the unrest, not true reform-seekers.
SANA said on Sunday that security forces seized a large quantity of weapons hidden in a lorry coming from Iraq. It reported that the weapons were confiscated at the Tanaf crossing on the Syrian-Iraqi border.
It said the shipment included machine-guns, automatic rifles, night vision goggles and grenade launchers.

Libyan rebels resist Ajdabiya assault Anti-government forces hold sway in key town but frontline fighters complain of lack of supplies and fear infiltrators

Libyan rebels resist Ajdabiya assault Anti-government forces hold sway in key town but frontline fighters complain of lack of supplies

Rebel fighters in eastern Libya fought off an attack by government troops in the town of Ajdabiya on Sunday, a day after retreating from a key oil facility around 100 kilometres farther west.

Forces loyal to longtime leader Muammar Gaddafi advanced on Ajdabiya under a heavy artillery barrage in the morning and fought at close range with rebels on the town’s southern outskirts before a counterattack forced them back, witnesses said.

On Saturday, with the help of NATO air strikes along the main coastal road, rebels reached the outskirts of Brega, the site of a major oil and petrochemical port west of Ajdabiya.

But a sandstorm that began overnight hampered air cover, and by Sunday morning rebels had retreated.

Dozens of civilian vehicles, many of them carrying families, fled Ajdabiya throughout the morning, and some rebels also appeared to join the withdrawal.

Two fighters were injured in the battle, suffering superficial shrapnel wounds during the bombardment, but none were seriously injured or killed, doctors at Ajdabiya Hospital said.
In response to the advance by Gaddafi’s forces, the opposition Transitional National Council issued orders that casualties should no longer go to Ajdabiya Hospital and should instead be sent directly to Benghazi, the seat of the rebel government around 160 kilometres to the north, the doctors said.

Some of the wounded already at the hospital were also evacuated. At least five ambulances with flashing lights and sirens blaring could be seen driving north out of Ajdabiya before noon.

Dozens of explosions from incoming artillery fire could be heard south of the town, and fighters said there were at least 100 blasts throughout the morning.
Barrage of rockets
The rebels responded with a barrage of Grad rockets, their flames streaming upward against the backdrop of a sky darkened by the sandstorm, which often reduced visibility to just a few hundred metres and gave Gaddafi’s troops cover to advance rapidly on Ajdabiya.

The bombardment from regime forces hit near the town’s large, green western gate - a landmark and rallying point for rebel forces - but shells also landed on residential areas, said Muhammad Barwuin, a rebel fighter. No civilians were reported to have been hurt in the attack.

Just 10 days ago, women and children had begun to return to Ajdabiya, and businesses started to reopen. But on Sunday, the town, which has traded hands multiple times in the months-long conflict, was deserted, and only fighters walked its shattered streets.
Shortly after noon, more than 30 vehicles carrying rebel reinforcements streamed into Ajdabiya, carrying a by-now familiar assortment of jury-rigged weaponry: machine guns, recoilless rifles, anti-aircraft batteries, and dismounted helicopter rocket pods, all welded to the back of pick-up trucks.

After the bombardment lifted, small arms fire echoed from deeper inside the town, and the government troops involved in the attack apparently withdrew. Rebels took up defensive positions around Ajdabiya and erected roadblocks made of rocks and metal sheets at most major intersections.

At the roundabout connecting two main roads, Tripoli and Bridge streets, rebels standing on the back of pickups stared attentively down the barrels of their machine guns, and an array of mounted rocket launchers pointed west.
Defensive line
Fighters also organised a defensive line along the southern edge of town, where they feared a counterattack from another major road that connects Ajdabiya to oil fields and towns to the south, where regime forces are rumoured to assemble.
Some fighters wore new, black body armour, while others have been seen carrying more advanced communications equipment, apparently supplied by the United Kingdom and Qatar.
But there was no evidence of any new weaponry, despite reports that rebels have begun using MILAN anti-tank rockets and a pledge from Qatar to provide them with similar weapons.
Supplies for the rebel army apparently remained tenuous. Several fighters said they were still primarily using rocket-propelled grenades and AK-47s. Some men have not eaten a full meal in days, and the frontlines needed fresh bread and water, one fighter on Bridge Street said.

There are also fears that Gaddafi’s forces, in the form of paid collaborators and ex-regime informants, continue to infiltrate rebel lines. Around midday, rebel cars arrived at a checkpoint east of Ajdabiya carrying a man who fighters said had been caught trying to steal a rebel vehicle.

They claimed the man wasn’t from Libya – like many suspected mercenaries and others singled out for arrest and violence by Libyans in the east, he was accused of coming from a neighbouring sub-Saharan country.

The rebels claimed two other suspected thieves had been arrested on Saturday and that they confessed to being paid a daily rate of 500 to 1,000 Libyan dinars ($414-$827) by Gaddafi’s forces to steal rebel cars, provide their location to loyalist troops, and sometimes open fire on them to sow chaos.

Several of the assembled fighters punched and kicked the man as he was loaded into the back of a sport utility vehicle that eventually drove off.

The rebels said he would be sent to Benghazi and would be appointed a lawyer by the opposition council.

Misurata besieged
In western Libya, fierce fighting continued for control of the country's third-largest city, Misurata.
At least six people were killed there in artillery fire on Sunday morning, with some 47 more injured. In the previous day's fighting, Misurata's food industry facilities were reportedly damaged.

Reporting from inside the city, Al Jazeera's Jonah Hull said a frontline cut the city in half with defenders appearing to be gaining ground.
A children's clinic has been transformed into a field hospital for wounded fighters and civilians, following the destruction of the main hospital several weeks ago, our correspondent said.
Khalid Abu Falgha, a spokesman for the clinic, said that on some days doctors had lost count of the number of wounded they had treated.
Some 99 Misurata residents were transported out of the besieged city overnight by Doctors Without Borders, arriving in the southern Tunisian port of Zarzis.
The group comprised of people injured in shelling and street fighting. It also included 64 people with serious injuries, and 10 patients in critical condition.
An International Committee of the Red Cross team is now in the city to assess the situation there, nearly a week after Libyan officials reportedly said that opening an aid corridor to the city would constitute "an act of war".

Yemen's Saleh 'welcomes' Gulf proposal

Yemen's Saleh 'welcomes' Gulf proposal 

Yemeni activists want legal action against Saleh and his sons, who hold key security and political posts [EPA]

Ali Abdullah Saleh, Yemen's embattled president, has welcomed "efforts" by members of the Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC) to end his country's political crisis, according to a statement from his office.
A GCC statement on Sunday, talked of "the formation of a national unity government under the leadership of the opposition which has the right to form committees ... to draw up a constitution and hold elections".

It said Saleh should hand his authorities over to his vice president and that all parties should "stop all forms of revenge .. and [legal] pursuance, through guarantees offered" - wording that appeared to offer Saleh assurances of no prosecution for him or his family once he leaves office.
The statement from Saleh's office on Monday said: "In compliance with statements made several times ... the president has no reservation against transferring power peacefully and smoothly within the framework of the constitution."

The response did not make clear whether Saleh accepted the proposal for him to step down and ensure a peaceful transition of power to his deputy, Abdrabuh Mansur Hadi.
Al Jazeera's correspondent in Sanaa said: "This has always been his position - the key words are 'within the constitution' which could either mean through elections at the end of the year, or if he chooses to resign it must be accepted by parliament.

"In which case, as we saw with the emergency law a few weeks ago, he can easily swing to make sure they don't accept his resignation."
'Blatant interference'
Speaking to Al Jazeera, Mahjoob Zweiri, professor of Middle Eastern history at Qatar University, said: "It is very difficult to say that what he [Saleh] is saying now is a positive response to the [GCC] initiative."

Opposition leaders will meet later on Monday to discuss the terms of the GCC plan.

Speaking to Al Jazeera, Najib Ghaniem, a senior member of the opposition Islah party, said: "We are only interested in the end to the agony of our people.
"If this initiative means that Saleh steps down, then all issues can be put on the table to discuss later on."
Saleh has been in power since 1978 and has faced fierce protests demanding his departure since late January.
"The opposition has accepted the initiative in principle and they are discussing it. But the youth in Taghyeer square have not accepted it yet," Zweiri added.
On Friday, the president rejected a proposal for his exit, made by Hamad bin Jassem al-Thani, Qatar's prime minister, as a "blatant interference in Yemeni affairs".

His statement came after the Qatari prime minister said that the GCC member countries "hope to reach a deal with the Yemeni president to step down".
More protests

Meanwhile, tens of thousands of people filled the streets of Sanaa, Taiz, Hudaida, Ibb and the southeastern province of Hadramut to protest against the GCC plan on Monday, witnesses said.

Diplomatic sources say Saleh has dragged his heels for weeks over US attempts to get him to agree to step down and end the protests crippling the country.
With more than 100 protesters killed as security forces tried to break up the demonstrations with tear gas and live fire, activists say they want to see legal action against Saleh and his sons, who occupy key security and political posts.
Saleh has been manoeuvring to win guarantees that he and his sons do not face prosecution.

"I see that now Ali Abdullah Saleh is worried, he is under increased pressure from Washington, from EU, from GCC," Zweiri said.

"There has been a decision made by Washington that he should go, and he was relying on getting support from Washington."

Long regarded by the West as a vital ally against al-Qaeda, Saleh has warned of civil war and the break-up of Yemen if he is forced to leave power before organising parliamentary and presidential polls over the next year.

Saleh had sought Saudi mediation for some weeks, but Gulf diplomatic sources have said Riyadh was finally prompted by concern over the deteriorating security situation in its southern neighbour.
Saudi Arabia, the world's biggest oil exporter, is the key financier of the Yemeni government as well as many Yemeni tribes on its border.

Many leaders in the region became convinced that Saleh is an obstacle to stability in a country that overlooks a shipping lane where over three million barrels of oil pass daily.