Libyan rebel leaders said Sunday that their forces hunted down and clashed with supporters of Moammar Gadhafi who had been posing as rebel fighters to infiltrate the opposition's eastern stronghold in Benghazi. The overnight battle killed four from each side and added to a sense of crisis within the rebel movement.
Libya's rebels are trying to rid their ranks of enemies after the assassination last week of their military chief, Abdel-Fattah Younis. The leadership insists the slaying was the work of Gadhafi's regime, but several witnesses have said Younis was killed by fellow rebels.
As officials pieced together events leading up to Sunday's gun battle, they announced that a faction of fighters called Al-Nidaa was actually made up of Gadhafi loyalists posing as rebels. Suspicions about Al-Nidaa were confirmed, a rebel security leader said, when intelligence officials determined the group was behind two prison breaks on Friday in Benghazi that freed 200 to 300 inmates, including pro-Gadhafi mercenaries and fighters and other regime loyalists.
"These people took advantage of the chaos that resulted from the killing of Younis and entered and attacked the military prison and the [civilian] Kuwaitiya prison," said the rebel's deputy interior minister, Mustafa al-Sagezli.
On Sunday, rebel forces tracked Al-Nidaa members to a factory and sent in negotiators. When the Gaddafi forces refused to surrender, the rebel units besieged the factory, and the deadly shootout followed, with those not slain captured, said rebel Information Minister Mahmoud Shammam.
MUBARAK SUMMONED FOR TRIAL
Egypt's prosecutor general formally summoned Hosni Mubarak to appear at his trial in Cairo, giving the clearest indication that the ousted president would be brought to the capital from a hospital in Sharm el-Sheikh in the Sinai this week despite questions about his health.
If Mubarak does appear at Wednesday's opening session in a makeshift courtroom at the national police academy, he will face an audience of 600 people, including relatives of some of the 850 protesters killed in the crackdown on the 18-day uprising that forced him from power in February. Activists believe Mubarak's health is being used as a ruse to postpone the proceedings against him, his sons Alaa and Gamal, and eight others. Last week, a hospital official reported that Mubarak, 83, "has not been eating, is significantly losing weight and is very weak."
NEWS SERVICES
