Tripoli, April 2
A coalition air strike killed at least 13 rebels near the key oil town of Brega today as fierce fighting raged between Muammar Gaddafi’s troops and pro-democracy forces with the defiant Libyan leader rejecting their conditional ceasefire offer.

NATO said it was ascertaining reports that a coalition warplane hit a rebel position on the outskirts of Brega in the midst of heavy fighting with Gaddafi’s forces.

Al Jazeera and BBC reports said a rebel convoy on its way to the front line near Brega fired an anti-aircraft gun into the air. Assuming it to have come from Gaddafi’s forces, coalition warplane targeted the vehicles.

A spokesman of Gaddafi’s government said the coalition air strike had left seven civilians dead. Mussa Ibrahim, the government spokesman, termed the strike a “crime against humanity”.

He dismissed the ceasefire offer by the rebels as a “mad” move aimed at buying time since they were facing defeat.

“They are asking us to withdraw from our own cities. .... If this is not mad then I don’t know what this is. We will not leave our cities,” Ibrahim was quoted as saying by Al Jazeera channel.

Rebels claimed that Gaddafi’s forces had killed at least six civilians in Misrata during heavy shelling and firing. In the rebel-stronghold of Benghazi, opposition leader Mustafa Abdul Jalil yesterday said they would agree to a ceasefire if Libyans still under Gaddafi’s regime are granted freedom of expression and forces loyal to him withdraw from cities.

“We agree on a ceasefire on the condition that our brothers in the western cities have freedom of expression and also that the forces that are besieging the cities withdraw,” he said at a joint press conference with Abdelilah Al-Khatib, the UN envoy.

Soon after the UN resolution approving a no-fly zone over Libya, Gaddafi had announced a ceasefire which was rejected by the coalition.

Amid the intense fighting in the east, the Arab channel said the rebels appeared to have more communication equipment such as radios and satellite phones, and were working in more organised units.

Kandahar, April 2
Ten persons died today in fresh protests against Koran burning in the US, a day after seven UN staff were killed by a mob in the worst attack on the world body in Afghanistan since the 2001 invasion.

The fresh protests began in the centre of the main southern city of Kandahar and spread as police clashed with crowds marching towards the UN offices and provincial administration headquarters, witnesses said.

The police had fired into the air to try to deter thousands of protesters heading towards the buildings, an AFP reporter at the scene said. Smoke was rising from different parts of the city as protesters burned cars and tyres.

The provincial authorities said the protesters had damaged government and private buildings and torched vehicles. Daud Farhad, a senior doctor in the city’s main hospital, said the death toll had risen to 10. About 83 others were injured, including two members of the Afghan security forces, he said. Provincial authorities had earlier given a toll of nine dead and 73 injured.

Kandahar is the spiritual heartland of the Taliban, who have fought an insurgency against President Hamid Karzai’s government in Kabul and its Western allies since they were ousted by the US-led invasion.

“Death to America” and “Death to Karzai” chanted the demonstrators. “They have insulted our Koran,” shouted one.

An AFP reporter saw two unidentified bodies being removed by demonstrators in Chawk Saheedan, a central location where the protests started.

Zalmai Ayoubi, a spokesman for the provincial administration, said a bus and a girls’ school had also been set ablaze.

He said “destructive elements have entered the crowds and are trying to turn it violent”. Ayoubi added that all the dead and injured were protestors.

The administration said 16 people, seven of them armed, had been arrested. The protest came a day after seven UN foreign staff, three Europeans and and four Nepalese guards, were killed during similar demonstrations in the normally relatively calm northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the Mazar-i-Sharif violence following a battle lasting more than three hours in which part of the UN compound was burned down amid small-arms fire and explosions. US President Barack Obama condemned the attack while UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said it was “an outrageous and cowardly attack”. — AFP

Tokyo/Fukushima, April 2
Highly radioactive water was found seeping into the sea from a crack in a containment pit of the troubled Fukushima nuclear plant, as Japanese Premier Naoto Kan promised full support to the tsunami-hit people of the northeast in his first visit to the region.

The operator of the stricken nuclear complex said it has discovered a 12-inch crack in a wall of the No.2 reactor at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant from where highly radioactive water appears to be seeping into the sea, while the IAEA termed the situation as “very serious”.

Kan, who had earlier flown over the region after the devastation struck, today inspected the tsunami-hit northeast for the first time and also gave a pep talk to the workers who are working overtime to minimise the damage caused by the country’s worst nuclear crisis.

Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) said water was leaking from the crack in the wall of a 2-metre deep pit that contains power cables near the water intake of the reactor, and the level of radiation has been measured at over 1,000 millisieverts per hour, national broadcaster NHK reported.

TEPCO said it is preparing to pour concrete into the cracked pit to stop the leak of radioactive water. The radiation detected in water in the basement of the turbine building at the No.2 reactor was about 100,000 times the normal level. The discovery, officials said, likely explains the rising radiation levels in sea water near the plant. — PTI