Libya's rebel government will not negotiate with Muammar Gadafy unless he surrenders, a top National Transitional Council official insisted today, adding rebel authorities did not know the former dictator’s whereabouts.
"No negotiation is taking place with Gadafy," said Ali Tarhouni, the rebel official in charge of oil and financial matters. "If he wants to surrender, then we will negotiate and we will capture him."
The Associated Press reported earlier that Col Gadafy's spokesman, Moussa Ibrahim, had said the deposed dictator had offered to negotiate to form a transitional government with the rebels and that he was still in Libya.
Since rolling into the Libyan capital a week ago, rebels have fought fierce battles with regime loyalists, but by this weekend had largely pushed them to the outskirts of the city. The rebels now control most of Libya, but Col Gadafy remains at large.
In the past, Col Gadafy referred to the rebels as “thugs” and “rats”. The rebels have repeatedly said they will not negotiate with Col Gadafy, who ruled Libya with an iron fist for 42 years.
Rebels said today they control the road between Tripoli and Sabha, a bastion of support for Col Gadafy in the southern desert.
Rebel spokesman Ahmed Bani told a news conference today they plan to advance on Sabha after taking control of the coastal town of Sirte, Col Gadafy's home town. He said rebels are currently trying to negotiate the surrender of Gagafy supporters in the city. "In the event they refuse, we will take it by force," he said.
Earlier this month, two Scuds were fired from near Sirte, a first in Libya’s six-month-old civil war.
In battle-scarred Tripoli, residents were struggling with severe shortages of fuel, water and electricity.
Mahmoud Shammam, the rebels’ information minister, said he hoped the area’s largest refinery, near the city of Zawiya, some 50km west of Tripoli, could be restarted soon. Mohammed Aziz, an operations manager there, said the refinery would start operating tomorrow.
Meanwhile, a large ferry chartered by the International Organisation for Migration docked in Tripoli’s harbour, unloading food, water and medical supplies. Today, the vessel is to take aboard 1,200 stranded foreigners, an IOM official said.
Gadafy loyalists killed at least 17 detainees and arbitrarily executed dozens of civilians as rebels moved into Tripoli, a human rights group said today. Reporters touring Tripoli have found clusters of decomposing corpses in several areas of the capital, including a roundabout near Col Gadafy's Bab al-Azizya stronghold.
The killings took place in the past week, as rebel fighters gradually took control of Tripoli, the Human Rights Watch report said.
“The evidence we have been able to gather so far strongly suggests that Gadafy government forces went on a spate of arbitrary killing as Tripoli was falling,” said Sarah Leah Witson of New York-based Human Rights Watch.
Some 18 bullet-riddled bodies, two with their hands bound, were found in a riverbed near the complex and witnesses told HRW they had been killed by Gadafy fighters, the statement said.
A further 29 corpses were found in a makeshift medical clinic near the compound, also showing signs of execution, HRW said. Four were lying dead on cots in the clinic, and at least one had been tied up.
HRW said it interviewed three survivors of alleged executions by pro-Gadafy forces, including a man who said he had been shot three times as mercenaries fired into a room of 25 prisoners after receiving orders to "just finish them off."
Agencies