Ajdabiyah, March 26
Libyan rebels backed by allied air strikes retook the strategic town of Ajdabiyah today after an all-night battle that suggests the tide is turning against Muammar Gaddafi’s forces in the east.

Western warplanes bombed the outskirts of Misurata further west to stop Gaddafi forces shelling the city, a rebel spokesman said. One inhabitant said 115 persons had died in Misurata in a week and snipers were still shooting people from rooftops.

In Ajdabiyah, rebel fighters danced on tanks, waved flags and fired in the air near buildings riddled with bulletholes. Half a dozen wrecked tanks lay near the eastern entrance to the town and the ground was strewn with empty shell casings.

There were signs of heavy fighting at Ajdabiyah’s western gate. The decomposing bodies of more than a dozen Gaddafi fighters were scattered on the ground. An abandoned truckload of ammunition suggested Gaddafi forces had beaten a hasty retreat.

“All of Ajdabiyah is free and all the way to Brega is free,” said Faraj Joeli, a 20-year-old computer science student turned rebel fighter.

Capturing Ajdabiyah, a gateway from western Libya to the rebel stronghold of Benghazi and the oil town of Tobruk, was a big morale boost for the rebels after two weeks on the back foot.

Western governments hope the raids, launched a week ago with the aim of protecting civilians, will also shift the balance of power in favour of the Arab world’s most violent popular revolt.

The rebels say they have been asking for arms from abroad to fight the better-equipped Gaddafi forces but have received none. A Reuters correspondent in Ajdabiyah said it seemed clear that air attacks there on Friday afternoon had been decisive. Gaddafi’s better-armed forces halted an early rebel advance near the major oil export terminal of Ras Lanuf two weeks ago and pushed them back to Benghazi, until Western powers struck Gaddafi’s positions from the sea and air.

Witnesses and rebel fighters said the Gaddafi forces had now retreated from Ajdabiyah towards the oil town of Brega.

Shelling by Gaddafi forces in Misurata, western Libya, eased after they were bombed by foreign warplanes, rebel spokesman Abdelbasset Abu Mzereiq told Reuters by telephone from the city.

Misurata is the only big rebel stronghold left in the west of Libya and it is cut off from the main rebel force fighting Gaddafi’s troops in the east. It has been encircled and under bombardment for weeks.

US President Barack Obama told Americans on Saturday that the allied mission in Libya had saved countless lives. "When the international community is prepared to come together to save many thousands of lives, then it's in our national interest to act," Obama said in a weekly radio address. — Reuters

Damascus, March 26
Thousands of mourners at a funeral for a Syrian killed in anti-government protests burned a ruling Baath party building and a police station today as authorities freed 260 prisoners in a bid to placate reformists.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was facing the deepest crisis of his 11 years in power after security forces fired on protesters on Friday, adding to a death toll that rights groups have said now numbers in the dozens.

Mosques across Deraa announced the names of “martyrs” whose funerals would be held in the southern city and on Saturday hundreds were gathering in the main square chanting for freedom.

Three bare-chested young men climbed onto the rubble of a statue of late President Hafez al-Assad, which protesters pulled down on Friday in a scene that recalled the toppling of Saddam Hussein’s statue in Iraq in 2003 by US troops.

A witness said they had cardboard signs reading “the people want the downfall of the regime”, a refrain heard in uprisings across the Arab world from Tunisia to Egypt to Yemen.

In nearby Tafas, mourners in the funeral procession of Kamal Baradan, who was killed on Friday in Deraa, set fire to the Baath party building and the police station, residents said.

A human rights lawyer said on Saturday that 260 prisoners, mostly Islamists, had been released after completing at least three-quarters of their sentences.

Dozens of people have been killed over the past week around the southern city of Deraa, medical officials said. There were reports of more than 20 new deaths on Friday.

Such demonstrations would have been unthinkable a couple of months ago in this most tightly controlled of Arab countries. But the unrest came to a head after police detained more than a dozen schoolchildren for writing graffiti inspired by slogans used by other pro-democracy demonstrators abroad. — Reuters

Tokyo, March 26
Amid efforts to stabilise Japan’s tsunami-stricken Fukushima plant, radiation levels have surged in seawater near the nuclear reactors north-east of the capital, as workers tried to remove contaminated water from it, officials said today.

Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said tests have shown radioactive iodine had surged 1,250 times higher than normal in the seawater some 330 metres south of the plant as the operator started pumping in fresh water into the No. 2 reactor core to enhance the cooling of its overheated fuel rods.

The level rose to its highest so far after staying around levels 100 times over the legal limit, said Tokyo Electric Power Co.(TEPCO), which operates the Fukushima plant, 250-km north-east of capital Tokyo.

It is highly likely that radioactive water in the plant has disembogued into the sea, said TEPCO, two weeks after the quake and tsunami rocked the country’s northeast leaving over 27,000 people dead or unaccounted for.

However, the safety agency said the contamination will not have significant impact on fishery products as fishing is not conducted in the area within 20 kilometers of the plant with the government already issuing a directive for residents in the area to evacuate.

Radioactive materials “will significantly dilute” by the time they are consumed by marine species, the agency was quoted as saying. — PTI