Libya rebels probe general’s murder, NATO hits TV

Libyan rebels on Saturday probed the killing of their army chief, a murder the Kadhafi regime said proved Al-Qaeda was behind the uprising, as NATO targeted the strongman’s “terror broadcasts.” “The NTC has appointed an investigative committee and we will publish all the facts of this investigation,” said Ali Tarhuni, who handles economic affairs for the rebel National Transitional Council.
General Abdel Fatah Yunis was the faithful right-hand man of Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi, participating in the 1969 coup that brought him to power, before defecting to the rebels fighting to oust the strongman since February. Tarhuni said Yunis’s bullet-ridden and partly burned body was found early on Friday on Benghazi’s outskirts, but that the NTC had received news of his death late on Thursday when the head of a militia behind the crime confessed.
“The head of the militia is imprisoned now,” Tarhuni said, adding that some of the perpetrators, who he said belonged to Jirah Ibn al-Obeidi brigade, were yet to be incarcerated, and the motive for the killing remained unclear. “We don’t know who they work for,” he said. Tripoli pinned the blame squarely on Al-Qaeda and argued that the killing exposed the impotence of the NTC.
“By this act, Al-Qaeda wanted to mark out its presence and its influence in this region” of eastern Libya controlled by the rebels, regime spokesman Mussa Ibrahim told reporters in Tripoli. “The other members of the National Transitional Council knew about it but could not react because they are terrified of Al-Qaeda,” he added. NATO in Brussels said in a statement early on Saturday its warplanes had launched precision strikes on three Libyan television transmitter dishes to silence “terror broadcasts” on state television. “Our intervention was necessary as TV was being used as an integral component of the regime apparatus designed to systematically oppress and threaten civilians and to incite attacks against them,” it quoted alliance spokesman Colonel Roland Lavoie as saying.
“NATO conducted a precision air strike that disabled three ground-based Libyan state TV satellite transmission dishes in Tripoli,” Lavoie said. “In light of our (UN) mandate to protect civilian lives, we had to act,” he said, adding that the strikes followed “careful planning to minimize the risks of casualties or long-term damage to television transmission capabilities.” An AFP journalist in Tripoli said a dozen explosions shook the Libyan capital on Friday night — the latest of many blasts in a city which has been targeted almost daily by NATO air raids. The military alliance, in its daily update, said warplanes also hit 13 military targets in the strategic oil town of Brega and 12 in Zliten, west of the rebel-held city of Misrata, among a total of 56 strike sorties on Friday.