LIVE Libyan Unrest: Gaddafi threatens “martyr” attacks in Europe

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10:00pm: Muammar Gaddafi threatened on Friday to send hundreds of Libyans to launch attacks in Europe in revenge for the NATO-led military campaign against him.
“Hundreds of Libyans will martyr in Europe. I told you it is eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth. But we will give them a chance to come to their senses,” the Libyan leader said in an audio speech carried on Libyan television.
Gaddafi, whose forces have been battling rebel fighters increasingly encroaching on his territory and NATO warplanes, was speaking in the desert town of Sabha, about 800 km (500 miles) south of Tripoli.
The speech, to a crowd of about 50,000 people, appeared designed to show that Gaddafi still enjoys support in areas of Libya he still controls.
“You will regret it, NATO, when the war moves to Europe,” he said, adding that the Canary Islands, Sicily, other Mediterranean islands as well as Andalusia in southern Spain were Arab lands that should be liberated.
“The Libyan people have no problem, the colonial powers are the ones who have a problem. They want to control our oil. They are jealous because God gave us the gift of oil,” Gaddafi said.
“We do not fear them. We have no choice but to resist, become martyrs and fight on till the end.”
5:30pm: NATO warplanes bombed forces loyal to Muammar Gaddafi in Libya’s Western Mountains on Friday at the front line where Gaddafi’s troops retreated two days ago from a rebel advance.
The bombs landed about three km (two miles) east of the village of Al-Qawalish, said Abdul Wahad, a rebel fighter manning the last checkpoint on the eastern edge of the village.
He said they struck four times in the mid-afternoon.
Rebels forced Gaddafi troops from the village on Wednesday in one of their biggest advances in weeks, pushing down the highway towards the strategic town of Garyan, which controls the main road south out of the capital Tripoli about 100 km (60 miles) away.
2:30pm: Hundreds of African migrants have been airlifted from government-controlled southern Libya and flown to the capital of Chad  - the first air evacuation by the International Organisation for Migration since the Libyan war broke out.

Some 370 migrants, mainly Chadian, have been evacuated from the Libyan town of Sebha on three flights chartered by the IOM since Wednesday, the agency said on Friday.

2:00pm: Five Libyan rebels were killed and 17 were injured in fighting with forces loyal to leader Muammar Gadaffi near Misurata on Friday, medical workers said.
A Reuters reporter near the front line said rebels were coming under heavy artillery fire.
1:30pm: Rebels help themselves to fuel from a petrol station in Al-Qawalish July 7, 2011. The frontline Libyan village of Al-Qawalish was a ghost town on Thursday, a day after it was seized by rebels, who said life may return to normal in the area after the exit of Muammar Gaddafi’s troops.

12:56pm: Turkey has frozen $1 billion worth of Libyan central bank reserves deposited in Turkish banks, the Star newspaper reported on Friday, citing Turkish foreign and economy ministry officials.
The move is part of U.N. sanctions against Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi’s government, the newspaper said.
Libya’s opposition National Transitional Council urged Turkey to release the reserves during a visit by Libyan rebel leader this week, Star said.
Turkey’s bank regulator issued a statement this week saying the state Savings and Deposit Insurance Fund had seized Libyan Foreign Bank’s shares in Turkey’s Arab Turk Bank.
Libyan Foreign Bank, a subsidiary of the Libyan Central Bank, holds 62.37 percent of Arab Turk Bank, which had 1.14 billion lira in assets in 2010.
11:14am: NATO said it conducted 134 air sorties on Thursday, 46 of them strike sorties that aim to identify and hit targets but do not always deploy munitions.
* NATO said key targets hit on Thursday included:
- Military refuelling equipment in the vicinity of Brega
- Three armed vehicles in the vicinity of Gharyan
- One military storage facility in the vicinity of Waddan
- One tank in the vicinity of Sirte
- One artillery piece, one radar in the vicinity of Zlitan
- Three anti-aircraft gun, one command-and-control centre in the vicinity of Tripol
11:11am: Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said on Thursday he was against NATO intervention in Libya but had to go along with it, an admission that exposed the fragility of the alliance trying to unseat Muammar Gaddafi.
NATO warplanes have been bombing Libya under a U.N. mandate, but the alliance is under mounting strain because of the cost of the operation and the failure, after more than three months, to produce a decisive outcome.
“I was against this measure,” Berlusconi said. “I had my hands tied by the vote of the parliament of my country. But I was against and I am against this intervention which will end in a way that no-one knows.”
Some of the alliance bombing missions over Libya take off from military airbases in Italy.
11:03am: Botswana says it differs with the African Union’s decision to disregard the international arrest warrant for Libya’s Moammar Gadhafi.
Last week, the AU called on its members to disregard the warrant, saying it “seriously complicates” its efforts to find a solution to the Libyan crisis.
Government spokesman Jeff Ramsay told The Associated Press on Thursday that Botswana is concerned about human rights violations in Libya and supports the warrant on Gadhafi “because as a member of the ICC we respect our treaty obligations. It does not pass judgment but calls for prosecution.”
Botswana has previously shown unwillingness to stand with African dictators. It has called for sanctions against Zimbabwe, criticizing a southern African grouping’s mediation efforts.
10:44am: Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general, spoke to Al-Baghdadi al-Mahmoudi, the Libyan prime minister, over phone on Wednesday about the “urgent need” to end the fighting and “work out a transition that could bring peace to all Libyans”.
A brief provided by Ban’s office said Abdelilah al-Khatib, the UN special envoy for Libya, will be visiting Tripoli soon for urgent consultations.
10:10am: The House is pressing to finish a $649 billion defense spending bill that sends mixed messages on the U.S. military operation against Libya.
The bill provides money for the Pentagon and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan beginning Oct. 1. It’s $9 billion less than President Barack Obama sought but $17 billion more than current levels.
Lawmakers hope to wrap up the bill Friday. The Senate still must pass its version and then reconcile it with the House legislation.
On Thursday, the House voted to prohibit military aid to Libyan rebels fighting Moammar Gadhafi but stopped short of cutting off funds for U.S. participation in the NATO-led mission, now in its fourth month.
Obama angered lawmakers by not seeking congressional consent for the operation.
9:40am: NATO has denied the Libyan government’s charge that it intentionally carried out air raids to aid rebel advances, saying it is sticking to UN mandate to protect civilian lives.
Wing Commander Mike Bracken, an alliance spokesman in Naples, Italy, said on Friday that NATO is “not involved in the ground battles”.
However, he acknowledged that NATO is tracking the fighting between Libyan opposition fighters and forces loyal to Muammar Gaddafi, the country’s long-time leader.
8:00am: A move to stop funding for President Barack Obama’s military intervention in Libya was narrowly defeated in the U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday, underscoring Congress’ unhappiness with the undeclared war.
Both political parties split over the measure, highlighting how tensions over U.S. involvement in Libya’s civil war have crossed party lines and created unusual alliances.
Republicans and Democrats argued that President Obama violated the U.S. Constitution and the 1973 War Powers Resolution by failing to secure congressional authorization for U.S. military operations in the north African country. Read full story here.
5:19am: As of Thursday Poland’s ambassador in Libya Wojciech Bozek resides in Libya’s second-largest metropolis Benghazi instead of the capital Tripoli, Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said here on Thursday.
The embassy move was necessary as Poland saw no possibility for cooperation with Muammar Gaddafi and considered the country’s Benghazi-seated Provisional Council as the only credible dialogue partner, Sikorski said after talks with visiting Algerian counterpart Murad Medelsi.
Sikorski added that Poland wished the Libyan conflict be resolved by political and not military means. Medelsi supported Sikorski’s view on Libya, stressing that the country is an important partner for Algeria. He also said military solutions in the Libyan conflict “should not be promoted”.
“The Libyan people will strive for reconcilement and normalcy,” Medelsi said.
Medelsi also stressed that Algeria had the “political will” to deepen relations with Poland.