Libyan Rebels Say They’re Being Sent Weapons from “Unknown Countries”

BENGHAZI, Libya — Libyan rebels in their eastern capital of Benghazi said they had begun receiving arms from abroad, at the same time as forces loyal to Col.Muammar el-Qaddafi escalated their attacks on the besieged western city of Misurata.

 

The rebel military leader, Gen. Abdel Fattah Younes, said Saturday in an interview with Al Arabiya, a satellite news channel, that his forces had received weapons supplies from unidentified nations that supported their uprising.

A spokesman for the rebels’ National Transitional Council, Mustafa Gheriani, confirmed General Younes’s statement but also refused to provide details. 
Asked whether any arms shipments had arrived yet, a spokesman for the rebel military, Col. Ahmed Bani, smiled broadly, but then insisted, “I didn’t quite confirm it.”
On Thursday, however, the emir of Qatar, Sheik Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, told CNN that his country would provide weapons to the rebels and that deliveries of antitank weapons might already have reached them. Qatar, along with Italy and France, has already recognized the rebels as the legitimate government of Libya.
Qatar hosted an international conference on Libya last week in which participants called for the ouster of the Qaddafi family from power in Libya. Afterward, the Italian foreign minister, Franco Frattini, said arms shipments to the rebels would be justified, but he stopped short of confirming whether Italy would make such shipments.
The assistance from other countries would come as evidence emerges that Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s military forces have used ground-to-ground rockets and cluster bombs, which have been banned by much of the world. Witnesses, survivors and physical evidence in recent days indicated that these so-called indiscriminate weapons, which cannot be fired precisely, had struck residential neighborhoods of Misurata.
The violence continued in Misurata on Saturday. Mortar barrages and a gun battle that began Friday evening raged past 2:40 a.m. on Saturday, but at last quieted before dawn. But early in the morning more mortars could be heard exploding in the city, and gunfire lit up the front-line fighting position near Tripoli Street for much of the morning and early afternoon.
NATO aircraft could be heard overhead intermittently, but seemed not to quiet the fighting. At one trauma center, the wounded arrived throughout the afternoon, including a 10-year-old boy with a shrapnel wound in his head. His cries and screams filled the center’s corridors.
Another man arrived near death, both of his legs severed by a blast. A wounded soldier from Colonel Qaddafi’s forces also turned up, shot through the upper left leg. He gave his name as doctors treated him, but refused to answer any further questions.
In the evening, a wounded doctor arrived at a trauma center near the front, saying that the Zawiya Hospital had been shelled and several people wounded.
In recent days, the port here has received large shipments of humanitarian aid in containers bearing the Qatari flag, although there has been no sign of arms shipments; parts of the port, however, are restricted to military only.
Abdul Hafidh Ghoga, the deputy chairman of the National Transitional Council, said at a news conference last week that the Libyan rebels would welcome both arms shipments and foreign trainers to teach them how to use more advanced weaponry, although no foreign ground troops were wanted.
On Saturday, Mr. Gheriani said the rebels had opened “professional training centers.” Asked if he meant that foreign advisers or trainers were present, he declined to reply but winked broadly, twice. “We have a lot of people being trained, real professional training, that we don’t talk to the world about,” he said.
Such training, he added, is in addition to a Libyan-run training camp for rebel volunteers to get basic instruction before heading to the front line, which is now about 100 miles south of here, outside of Ajdabiya.
On Saturday, that volunteer training camp was closed to journalists, although previously it had been open. A machine gun emplacement guarding the main entrance was abandoned, although the machine gun and live ammunition were left in place there, unattended.
Also on Saturday, the Ionian Spirit, a ferry boat chartered by the International Organization for Migration, returned from the besieged western city of Misurata, carrying nearly 1,200 refugees fleeing there. They were among an estimated 8,000 migrant workers who had been trapped in Misurata, most of them from Egypt and Bangladesh, with others from many Middle Eastern countries, according to Jeremy R. A. Haslam of the organization.
Mr. Haslam said the ship would return Saturday to ferry more of the migrants out of Misurata.
“They’re desperate,” he said; “everyone wants to go.”
He said security concerns obliged the ship’s crew to accept some of the healthier people for the first trip out, instead of those who were weakest and most in need.
“It was survival of the fittest,” he said.

C. J. Chivers contributed reporting from Misurata, Libya.