Africa, Libya | featured news

A mass grave thought to hold the remains of more than 1200 victims of a 1996 massacre at Abu Salim prison has been found in Tripoli, officials with Libya's transitional government said Sunday.

The head of Libya's National Transitional Council said an interim government will be announced in the coming week.

Diehard loyalists of Muammar Gaddafi unleashed barrages of rockets and mortars to beat back an assault by interim government forces on one of their last bastions in Libya's desert and also held off an advance into his home town.

The U.N. General Assembly voted Friday to give Libya's seat in the world body to the former rebels' National Transitional Council which led the rebellion that ousted Muammar Qaddafi. The vote means that a senior council official will be able to join world leaders and speak for Libya at next week's ministerial session of the General Assembly and also participate in meetings.

In addition to the assault on Sirte, opposition forces continue their fight in Bani Walid, another Kadafi stronghold. Fighting continued in Moammar Kadafi's hometown of Sirte on Friday, with 13 anti-Kadafi troops reported killed and at least 25 wounded.

Airlines are readying their return to Libya, ports largely shuttered during the fighting are receiving cargos and foreign oil companies that had fled the country's civil war are making tentative steps back....

Forces loyal to the deposed Libyan leader attacked the Mediterranean port of Ras Lanuf on Monday, killing at least 15 anti-Qaddafi fighters, the transitional rebel government reported.

A convoy carrying ousted Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi’s son al-Saadi has crossed into neighboring Niger, a spokesman for Niger’s government said Sunday, the highest profile former regime figure to flee to the landlocked African nation. Al-Saadi, the fugitive ruler’s 37-year-old son, entered Niger in a convoy with nine other people, said Niger Justice Minister Amadou Morou. The vehicles were traveling south toward the outpost of Agadez, where other fleeing Libyan loyalists are believed to be holed up in a hotel.

As Interpol issued arrest warrants for the fugitive Libyan autocrat Col. Muammar Qaddafi and two others on Friday, reports came from Niger of a new convoy of high-ranking Libyan officials arriving across the desert.

Sitting on a carpet under the shade of a tree, the men say they know where Moammar Gaddafi is today — and where he will always be. “He is in our hearts,” they say, almost in unison, tapping their chests with their right hands. Two weeks ago, almost every house in the town of Ajaylat, a Gaddafi stronghold about 50 miles west of Tripoli, flew the green flag of the autocrat’s regime. Today, those flags have been taken down, but the rebels’ red, black and green banner flies over only a handful of government buildings.