As it happened: ferocious attack on rebel held Zawiya

A senior oil worker said: “The ships can’t come here because of the danger. For a week now we haven’t been able to export. A lot of people have come and damaged everything,”

Output has fallen to 100,000 barrels a day from 380,000.

1842 GMT The three Dutch soldiers who were captured in Libya last month are being treated well, the Dutch defence minister said today.

Hans Hillen told the parliament in The Hague that an envoy had seen the men, who were in good spirits, but he would not elaborate on Dutch efforts to liberate them.

“They are being treated well,” he said. “They are in good form, they have enough to eat and drink.... Intensive diplomatic consultations are underway for their release.”

1821 GMT It remains unclear whether pro-Gaddafi loyalists have re-taken Zawiya, the closest rebel-held city to Tripoli. A government official claimed armed forces had recaptured the city, but some residents reported that rebels still held the city’s main square in spite of the heavy barrage of artilery from tanks and aerial assaults.

The city has been sealed off and phone lines have been cut, making it impossible to verify accounts of what is going on.

1810 GMT David Charter, The Times correspondent in Brussels, says two senior leaders of the Libyan opposition will meet MEPs tomorrow when they are expected to join calls for a no-fly zone. He writes:

Mahmud Gebril, 58, Libya’s former planning minister and Ali al-Essawi, 45, former ambassador to India, both members of the provisional national council, are travelling to Strasbourg at the invitation of former Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt.

Kristalina Georgieva, the EU’s commissioner for humanitarian aid, will also meet the Libyan leaders. “Everything needs to be done to reduce the suffering of the people,” she said. “It is not my area of competence, but if there is a unanimous position to impose an air exclusion zone and that could help the people, it will be legitimate,” she said.

Mr Verhofstadt’s Liberal group in the European Parliament also back the creation of a no-fly zone. “The air exclusion zone should have been decided on a long time ago,” Mr Verhofstadt said.

1739 GMT Jennifer Currie 28, from Crosby in Merseyside, escaped Libya with her children this week but her MP says his office was forced to step in to help when the Foreign Office initially refused to assist the evacuation.

“Jennifer had to agree to pay £1,400 for the tickets when she got home. Will the Foreign Secretary investigate why the arrangements were left to an MP’s caseworker, and why the penniless mother of an eight-month-old baby was asked to pay for her children’s escape from a war zone?,” her MP Bill Esterson asked in the Commons.

The Foreign Secretary, who has been mocked as “William Vague” after his handling of the crisis, refused to accept the criticism - saying that ministers did “not accept the Hon gentleman’s description”.

Downing Street says it will not comment on reshuffle speculation after Mr Hague’s position was questioned by Sir Menzies Campbell last night. In a press conference today, Mr Hague said he wanted to keep his job for an “extended period of time”.

1715 GMT General James Amos, head of the US Marines, has played down the effectiveness of a potential no-fly zone, saying that fixed-wing aircraft are not posing the most significant threat to rebels. “I think it’s modest. I think probably the greatest threat are their helicopter-type forces,” he said.

1655 GMT The New York Times has a fascinating piece about the forgotten foreigners trapped in Libya. Thousands of Sub-Saharan Africans are thought to be trapped on the edges of Tripoli with no aid, little water and a slim chance of escape.

Many of those stranded entered Libya illegally as migrant workers, for others their countries do not have the resources to mount large rescue missions.

Colonel Gaddafi’s policy of hiring mercenaries from more southerly African nations has also left dark-skinned immigrants vulnerable to mistaken reprisal attacks.

Samson Adda, 31, said residents of Zawiya, a rebellious city, had beaten him so badly that he could no longer walk. “Gaddafi has brought African soldiers to kill some of them, so if they see black people they beat them.”

1632 GMT Waiting for Gaddafi. He was expected to address Western journalists and their cameras about two and a half hours ago. The reporteers have been warned that if they try to film his arrival from hotel balconies they “will be shot” - we will let you know if and when he pitches up.

1608 GMT: Security sources say that al-Jazeera is incorrect, and the six SBS troops did not exchange fire before they were taken captive near Benghazi on Friday night.

1547 GMT: The Times defence editor Deborah Haynes reports from the Libyan border in Tunisia: “Moktad Ali, a Bangladeshi man who has lived in Libya for 24 years, abandoned his home in the frontline town of Zawiya today and fled the country with his wife and two children. He said the situation was terrible.

“’There is a lot of confusion,’ said Mr Ali as he led his nine-year-old son and four-year-old daughter across the well-guarded border into Tunisia. ‘I have lost my money, all my belongings, try to imagine how I feel.’

“His children, smiling despite the chaos, each clutched a thin plastic bag containing a few snacks and a bottle of water handed to them by aid workers at the border. The family is a rare sight at this border point where the majority of the thousands of people to cross over during the past three weeks have been single men. They were herded on to a coach along with scores of other evacuees and taken to a sprawling camp nearby to be processed and wait for a flight to Bangladesh.

“The number of foreigners fleeing the conflict zone has dropped sharply since last week, prompting fears that Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s forces are preventing people from leaving.”

1522 GMT: The six severely embarrassed SBS troops who were captured by farmers on Friday can take some small consolation from the fact that they are in excellent company when it comes to bungling in Benghazi. The First Post reveals that even David Stirling, the celebrated founder of the Special Air Service, came a cropper three times when trying to carry out operations in the city:

“On March 25 1942 Stirling and six men slipped into the port carrying a rucksack full of limpet mines and a folding canoe. The aim was to paddle out to the Italian warships at anchor in the harbour and blow them sky high. The plan was audacious, but the canoe atrocious, and when it was finally assembled by the quayside it was found to be unseaworthy.

“Two months later Stirling returned for a second crack at Benghazi...The plan was the same as it had been two months earlier, to blow up enemy shipping, but this time the SAS had brought along two rubber dinghies. Alas the SAS couldn’t even blow up their dinghies as both had sprung leaks on the long and bumpy trek across the desert in the back of a truck...

“So back Stirling went to Benghazi in September, hoping it would be third time lucky. It wasn’t. This time the SAS didn’t even reach the port but instead were ambushed on an approach road. Forced to withdraw with several casualties, the SAS gave up on Benghazi and returned to attacking airfields and supply trucks.”

1501 GMT: William Hague said today that a no-fly zone over Libya was a practical possibility but it would need a clear legal basis.

“It is a realistic possibility and it is a practical possibility,” the Foreign Secretary said during a joint press conference in London with Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian President.

“It has to have a clear legal base, it has to have the necessary international support, broad support in the region itself.”

1459 GMT: There are reports of heavy shelling by government troops in the area between Ras Lanuf and Bin Jawad, where fighting was going on today between rebels and Gaddafi’s army.

An AFP reporter saw three badly wounded rebel fighters being carried into the hospital in Ras Lanuf. The rebels said government troops had unleashed a torrent of fire. “It’s like he’s swatting a fly,” said one.

Saad Hamid, a press spokesman for the rebels’ leadership council, said that Gaddafi forces were fortifying just behind the front line. “They are digging trenches and making fortifications. They have brought up rocket launchers, tanks and artillery. They have also intensified air strikes,” he said at a checkpoint outside Ras Lanuf.

1451 GMT: Médecins Sans Frontières confirms the puzzling and concerning fall in the number of refugees fleeing into Tunisia from western Libya, and warns that the regime appears to be preventing wounded people from reaching the border.

“Since March 3, the flow of people crossing the border has declined, from 8,000 to 14,000 people per day down to around 2,500 people per day, on average,” the charity said.

“While most of the migrants’ needs are being met, on March 4 MSF launched a mental healthcare programme, as many of these people have either witnessed or suffered various forms of violence whilst in Libya, and face great uncertainty for their immediate future...

“Wounded people are reportedly not allowed out of Libya and very few cases of wounded people crossing the Tunisian border have been reported, while medical teams and supplies are blocked on the Tunisian side of the border. MSF is currently looking at all ways to send more medicine and medical supplies to meet the needs expressed by medical staff inside western Libya.”

On Saturday The Times reported on a camp 15 miles inside the Libyan border where the regime appears to be holding thousands of would-be refugees.

1432 GMT: The Dutch news agency ANP says that a delegation of Dutch diplomats and soldiers has arrived in Malta, en route to negotiate the release of three Dutch Marines taken prisoner by Gaddafi troops more than a week ago as they tried to escort two diplomats out of Libya.

The Dutch foreign ministry would not confirm the mission. “For now, we are doing everything in our power to set them free. It is on a diplomatic level, and that is all for the moment that we can say,” said a ministry spokeswoman, Marloes Visser.

1429 GMT: The first convoy of food aid has arrived in Libya. The World Food Programme says that a convoy of trucks carrying 70 metric tons of high-energy fortified date bars has crossed the Egyptian border and is due to arrive in Benghazi.

Libya is heavily dependent on imported food, but deliveries have dwindled since the uprising, and no aid has so far reached the country. Last week a ship carrying over 1,000 metric tons of food turned back from Benghazi amid security concerns.

1422 GMT: Mustafa Abdel Jalil, the head of the rebels’ National Council, has given Colonel Gaddafi an ultimatum - if he stands down within the next 72 hours his countrymen will not pursue him to put him on trial.

“If he leaves Libya immediately, during 72 hours, and stops the bombardment, we as Libyans will step back from pursuing him for crimes,” Mr Jalil, Libya’s former justice minister, told al-Jazeera by telephone at lunchtime. He said the deadline would not be extended beyond 72 hours.

Colonel Gaddafi is expected to make a speech to reporters in Tripoli this afternoon.

1409 GMT: Mystery in Benghazi’s Ouzo Hotel. Mohamed Nayef, a Jordanian doctor who said he works for Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), was taken away at gunpoint from the hotel room he shared with two female colleagues at 1.30pm today by men dressed in rebel army uniforms.

“The hotel manager said the men had told him that Mohammed was being taken for questioning and would be returned in a couple of hours” said MSF volunteer Tamim el-Hilali, who said he worked with Nayef.

But within minutes Anne Chatelain, the medical charity’s emergency co-ordinator for Libya, issued a denial that Dr Nayaf was a member of their team. “He doesn’t work for us in Libya. He is not at all part of our team. It’s he who says he is part of the MSF team; that’s the price of our reputation,” she said.

A small bomb went off in the entrance of the same hotel, where many foreign journalists are based, at 4am today, breaking two windows and leaving a hole in the floor tiles. The hotel receptionist said that someone threw a grenade and drove off at speed.

1358 GMT: A migrant worker from Ghana who managed to evade the government troops encircling Zawiya this morning and flee across the Libyan border into Tunisia says that the rebels are issuing appeals on loud hailers for residents to come to fight. “The rebels in the streets were calling people from speakers to help defend the town,” he said.

A government spokesman, Moussa Ibrahim, said the regime was in control of the town, although a small group of fighters was still putting up resistance. “The situation is very difficult. There are still pockets of resistance, maybe 30-40 people, hiding in the streets and in the cemetery. They are desperate,” he told Reuters in Tripoli.

1352 GMT: Foreign ministers from the Arab League states are expected to meet in Cairo on Saturday to discuss a possible no-fly zone over Libya, said Hisham Youssef, the chief of staff of the League’s Egyptian secretary general, Amr Moussa.

1335 GMT: A no-fly zone over Libya would probably have only a limited impact on Colonel Gaddafi’s offensives against the rebels, but strict sanctions could have more success, the military experts at the International Institute for Strategic Studies said today.

Douglas Barrie, a military aerospace analyst, said that Colonel Gaddafi has around 300 combat aircraft, but that far fewer are likely to be operational, and the regime appeared increasingly reliant on around 35 attack helicopters, which were in any case able to get around no-fly bans because they were far harder to detect.

The institute pointed out that the cost in fuel alone would be very high, and also cast doubt on whether the West would be willing to divert the planes and surveillance resources from Afghanistan and the anti-piracy operations off the Horn of Africa to police the no-fly zone.

The institute also suggested that in the long run Gaddafi’s army would lose strength while the rebels would gain in capability and confidence. It estimated that last November Libya had 76,000 active troops and 40,000 militia fighters available as a reserve force. Many of those forces had been based in eastern Libya and sided with the opposition, with elite troops and parts of the air force allied with loyalists closer to Tripoli, said retired Brigadier Ben Barry.

Much of Libya’s regular army still under Gaddafi’s control is poorly equipped, lacks a coherent command structure and is probably suffering from waning morale, he said. Colonel Gaddafi’s problem was that although he had better equipped elite forces around Tripoli, they didn’t appear to have the capability to contain protests in the capital and simultaneously join offensives elsewhere. “Using these troops outside of Tripoli could loosen his grip there,” Brigadier Barry said.

“The longer this goes on, the greater the chances of the rebels increasing their combat capability, and the more chance there is for sanctions to bite.”

1331 GMT: Al-Jazeera has broadcast an unconfirmed report that the six SBS bodyguards were involved in a gun battle before they were taken captive on Friday along with two British diplomats near Benghazi. We are trying to verify whether this is true.

1315 GMT: The European Union has reportedly reached agreement on further sanctions against Libya, this time affecting the country’s sovereign wealth fund, according to the AFP news agency.

The shape of the fresh sanctions seems to have been agreed behind the scenes but they must be formally signed off by national capitals and will come into force when published in the Official Journal of the EU on Thursday or Friday, writes Times correspondent David Charter.

They are understood to targe five entities, including the Libyan Central Bank and the £70 billion Libyan Investment Authority, Libya’s sovereign wealth fund, which has invested oil revenues in organisations as diverse as the media group Pearson and the Italian football club Juventus.

Pearson, publisher of the Financial Times and Penguin books, last week froze the LIA’s shares in the company, around 3.27 per cent of the company’s issued share capital worth around €295 million. It means that LIA will not receive dividends from the shares.

Other holdings include 2.6 per cent of Italian bank UniCredit, more than 2 per cent of that Italian aerospace and defence company Finmeccanica SpA and via a related investment vehicle, and nearly 2 per cent of Fiat, the Italian carmaker.

The European Union has already imposed the toughest international sanctions yet on Colonel Gaddafi’s regime, ordering an asset freeze and visa ban against the Libyan leader and 25 others, including his seven sons and his daughter, along with his wife, Safia al-Barassi. The EU sanctions, which target more people than a UN list, also enforced an embargo on arms sales to Libya.

1239 GMT: The Libyan rebels have launched their own diplomatic offensive, as two senior members of their provisional national council head to Strasbourg today to speak to members of the European Parliament.

Mohammed Jibril, 58, a famous former dissident who is also Libya’s former planning minister, and Ali al-Essawi, 45, former ambassador to India who was one of the first Libyan diplomats to defect last month, have emerged in recent days as among the council’s leadership. They have agreed to give a briefing to the parliament’s Liberal group on developments in Libya, according to Guy Verhofstadt., the head of the group.

Mr Jibril heads the rebel council’s “Crisis Committee” and Mr al-Essawi, who was in Cairo earlier meeting representatives of the Arab League, is foreign minister in charge of external relations. They are to meet liberal MEPs from 1600 GMT and will hold a press conference tomorrow at 1400 GMT. The meetings take place amid plenary debates on Libya, and a Libya crisis summit in Brussels on Friday.

Two other figures have emerged as the rebels’ Revolutionary Council - now renamed the Provisional Transitional National Council, or PTNC - continues to coalesce. Mustafa Abdel Jalil, the former justice minister, is the council leader, and Omar Hariri, who was in the 1969 Free Officers movement with Gaddafi but later jailed, is its defence minister.

James Hider reports from Benghazi that many of the council members remain inaccessible as they are still meeting in secret, their names undisclosed for security reasons. But the council is organising slowly, though a member he spoke to said their organisation now was “only at 50 per cent”.

1231 GMT: A harrowing phone call is broadcast on al-Jazeera, from a man who managed to make phone contact with Zawiya this morning.

“My friend said it’s miserable. He described that Gaddafi forces are trying to destroy the city. Many buildings are completely destroyed, including hospitals, electricity lines and generators,” he said.

“People cannot run away, it’s cordoned off. They cannot flee. All those who can fight are fighting, including teenagers. Children and women are being hidden.

“They tried to evacuate. Their (Gaddafi forces) tanks are everywhere, firing. They (rebels) are fighting back. Gaddafi’s army is not in control. The fighting is continuing.”

If Gaddafi’s troops really have landmined the fields around Zawiya, then the avenues of escape are closed. It seems like a situation that the International Criminal Court’s investigation into crimes against humanity might be interested in.

1206 GMT: A missile has hit a two-storey block of flats in Ras Lanuf, the first time that an airstrike has hit residential property in the town. The bomb blew off the side wall on the ground floor but there were no initial reports of casualties. An unexploded bomb is lying in the street near the block, some 400 metres from the eastern gate of the town.

One person was wounded in three earlier airstrikes near the main checkpoint.

Mustafa Askat, an oil worker, said one bomb had wrecked a water line and this would affect water supplies to the city. “We have a hospital inside, we have sick people and they need water urgently,” he said.

1159 GMT: Rebels have set up a checkpoint five miles west of Ras Lanuf and are refusing to allow reporters to travel further towards Bin Jawad because of the fighting there this morning. Rebels report that Gaddafi forces are fortifying their lines around Bin Jawad as if digging in for a long battle.

1132 GMT: Fierce fighting began again two hours ago in the small town of Bin Jawad, where the rebels in the east suffered their first serious setback on Sunday, according to Khaled, an intelligence officer with the rebel fighters in Ras Lanuf.

Government troops attacked there at dawn, Khaled tells al-Jazeera by phone, and the revolutionaries are trying to drive them back. “Very big fighting now in Bin Jawad since two hours ago,” he said.

Khaled says that the airstrikes on Ras Lanuf are continuing, but are inflicting little damage. “Two bombs frighten us too much because it was just 50 or 60 metres away from a chemical plant,” he said, above a rattle of gunfire.

“Now we can see two airplanes moving above us in the sky, and we don’t know what time they will strike us again. The rebels are seeking their places behind the hills. Gaddafi is in a hurry because he knows that any time now a no-fly zone will take effect.”

1128 GMT: The Wall Street Journal carries an interesting but unverifiable report today that Colonel Gaddafi’s inner circle is split between reformers who would like him to stand down in favour of a ruling council of technocrats who could bring in democratic reforms, and the hardliners who insist on him remaining in power and crushing the rebels.

The newspaper quotes “a person familiar with the situation” as saying that the reformers want Colonel Gaddafi to be given an honorary title reflecting his service to the country, but shunted aside from day-to-day decision-making, The source claimed that members of Gaddafi’s family were briefed on the plan.

The newspaper said that it was unclear which camp within Gaddafi’s inner circle - hard-liners or reformists - had more sway. Two of the leader’s seven sons are commanders of brigades leading military assaults against the rebels.

1102 GMT: Mustafa Abdel Jalil, the former justice minister who has emerged as the leader of the rebel council in Benghazi, today denied the confusing rumours that Colonel Gaddafi had sent an emissary to the east with an offer to resign. Instead a bunch of lawyers had taken it upon themselves to try to act as go-betweens, said Mr Jalil.

“He didn’t send anyone. People put themselves forth as intermediaries to stop the flow of blood and to end what the people in (Libya’s third city of) Misrata are being subjected to,” Mr Jalil told the AFP news agency by telephone. “These people are activist lawyers from Tripoli.”

Interestingly, Mr Jalil seems to have no appetite at this stage for putting the dictator on trial. “We are of course with ending the bloodshed, but first he has to resign and then he has to leave and then we won’t pursue him criminally,” he said.

Rebel representatives had earlier claimed that an approach had been made to the rebels on behalf of Colonel Gaddafi himself, but that they had insisted there would be no negotiations.

1052 GMT: The Libyan regime has also invited the United Nations or EU to send an independent observer mission to evaluate the situation across the country, David Charter adds from the Brussels briefing.

The idea is supported by all eight remaining EU embassies in Tripoli, according to a senior European official who flew back from Tripoli last night.

The invitation for an observation mission was made by Ahmed Jarrod, Libya’s director general of European affairs, when he met members of the European External Action Service on their fact-finding visit to Tripoli yesterday.

It comes as the EU is poised to introduce new sanctions against Libyan investment organisations.

1042 GMT: The Libyan authorities have invited back all the ambassadors who left at the start of the uprising, and has guaranteed their security, according to Times correspondent David Charter, who is attending a briefing in Brussels on the findings so far of the EU External Action visit to Tripoli.

The move sounds like an effort by Colonel Gaddafi to reassert his legitimacy over the rebel council in Benghazi, which last week declared itself the only authority in Libya.

At present eight EU embassies remain open in Tripoli, including five ambassadors, the Brussels briefing is told. They represent Bulgaria, Cyprus, Greece, thje Netherlands, Hungary, Italy, Malta and Romania.

In total there are about 1,300 Europeans remaining in Libya, but the numbers are hard to verify. Around 200 are expected to leave in next few days.

Britain has no Ambassador in Tripoli and the Embassy is shut. A single British representative is operating out of the Turkish Embassy, looking after the interests of the roughly 180 Britons known to be in the country. Many of these are journalists who have no intention of leaving as yet.

1029 GMT: A second report that Zawiya has fallen. A witness has told the Associated Press news service by phone that Colonel Gaddafi’s tanks and fighting vehicles are roaming the city and firing randomly at homes.

But @AlManaraMedia tweets that the government assault is still continuing, and picked up again this morning, suggesting that some rebels are still holding out. Government forces are mining the fields around Zawiya, tweets @libyafreedomnew.

Yesterday afternoon @AlManaraMedia tweeted that “the revolutionaries captured one of Gaddafi soldiers who admitted they had orders to recover Zawiya before Wednesday”. If true, the pressure is on for government forces to wrap up the task of retaking the city in the next 24 hours. This may signal a lot more bloodshed today.

0949 GMT: Libyan warplanes launched three new airstrikes this morning near rebel positions in the oil port of Ras Lanuf, keeping up a counter-offensive to prevent the opposition from advancing toward the capital Tripoli. There was no immediate word on casualties, but reporters at the scene said no rebel fighters were hit.

Despite the tragedy yesterday when a civilian car was hit on the road out of Ras Lanuf, killing a family with children, quite a few of the missiles fired by government F16s do seem to miss. Some rebels are speculating that this is deliberate, and that the pilots are aiming away from the large concentrations of rebel fighters who appear to present a clear target on the ground.

Rebel General al-Gitriani told The Times yesterday that the pilots were not being given parachutes, to prevent them from baling out and letting their costly planes crash into the desert rather than firing on their fellow Libyans, as at least one pilot has done. He also said that Colonel Gaddafi was hiring fighter pilots from nearby Syria who would not have the same squeamishness about firing on fellow countrymen.

0923 GMT: Reporters Without Borders has just published its list of violence and obstruction suffered by journalists in the last few days as they tried to cover the uprisings taking place throughout the Middle East and North Africa. It is a long list.

* In Libya, France 24 cameraman Jean-Marie Lemaire was shot in the calf at Bin Jawad on Sunday; internet access has been blocked since March 3, after weeks of disruption (the leading ISP is owned by Mohammed Gaddafi, the Libyan leader’s son).

* In Algeria, 12 journalists were among 100 people rounded up before a demonstration in Oran.

* In Bahrain, police making widespread use of “indirect censorship” - confining reporters to airports, confiscating television transmission equipment, restricting visas; websites blocked.

* In Saudia Arabia, websites calling for political reform are blocked, and a law professor arrested for writing an article called “And if the Saudis said the people want to overthrow the regime?”.

* In Qatar, the blogger and human rights activist Sultan Khulaifi has been arrested and is being held incommunicado.

* In Yemen, Salah al-Mansoub was attacked by unknown thugs while taking photos of a pro-Saleh demo yesterday; a reporter and cameraman for the al-Saudiya TV station were attacked by men with swords on Sunday - they were rescued by passers by; reporter Adel Omar was hit by a stone thrown by government supporters and his camera stolen as police looked on; Yemen Online was hit by a cyber attack that altered photos and text, after its owner received telephone threats; reporter Mohammed al-Jaradi was attacked by government supporters on Friday and his hand broken; the house of newspaper owner Nasser Abdullah al-Dibibi was ransacked and burned down after he published an edition with the headline “Go!”; several newspapers have been blocked from circulating in Aden, their editions seized; and the popular al-Masdar Online website remains inaccessible.

Reporters in Syria, Iraq and Iraqi Kurdistan have also suffered numerous incidents of violence, arrest and censorship.

0921 GMT: In a symbolic withdrawal of support, Khartoum University in Egypt has revoked Colonel Gaddafi’s honorary degree.

0850 GMT: The besieged city of Zawiya, just 30 miles from the heart of Colonel Gaddafi’s power in the LIbyan capital, took a tremendous pounding from government forces last night, it emerged this morning.

Electricity and mobile phone coverage to the town have been cut off, and the roads blocked to prevent foreign journalists entering - although The Times managed to slip in on Sunday, the day after 30 people were killed by tank fire - leaving news thin on the ground. But the Libyan opposition website al-Manara claimed that “fierce battles” took place in the morning and resumed in the evening, and it posted an audio account from an unidentified woman speaking from the city who said: “Old and young people are dying and we cannot even evacuate the injured... Since 10am (0800 GMT) tanks have been firing.”

A flurry of tweets by oppostion groups described a catastrophic situation and accused Gaddafi forces of destroying the city, which has a population of 290,000. @Changeinlibya said that at least eight people died and 30 were injured yesterday. For more, check the Twitter hashtag #Feb17.

Al-Jazeera reported this morning that Zawiya had fallen, but there was no confirmation of this.

A similar situation is believed to be unfolding in Misrata, another substantial rebel-held city on the coast between Tripoli and Sirte.

0836 GMT: Good morning and welcome to The Times’s rolling coverage of the uprising in Libya and unrest across the Middle East.

In The Times this morning you can read how international opinion is hardening against Colonel Gaddafi as his fighter jets continue to bomb civilians. James Hider in Benghazi reports how children were killed yesterday in a car struck by a missile as they fled the front line town of Ras Lanuf with their parents. A heart-rending photo shows a man holding up a child’s flip-flop in the wreckage of the vehicle.

The regime continues to recruit foreign mercenaries to do its fighting, with 300 ethnic Tuaregs from the Sahel region the latest to arrive to earn up to $1,000 a day to put down the uprising.

William Hague was forced to defend the indefensible in the Commons yesterday as he made a statement on the botched diplomatic mission to the Libyan rebels which resulted in two British diplomats and six SBS soldiers being taken captive by armed Libyan farmers. Ann Treneman’s political sketch mocks Mr Hague’s part in the cloak-and-dagger operation.

And Martin Fletcher in Tripoli reports how Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi, the Libyan agent turned Lockerbie bomber who was freed from prison near Glasgow on compassionate grounds in August 2009, has still not succumbed to terminal prostate cancer, and is frequently seen out and about in his red Lamborghini visiting his growing property empire paid for by the Libyan regime.

Elsewhere in the region, Ashraf Khalil in Egypt reports how protesters broke into the offices of the feared State Security apparatus over the weekend to prevent ex-President Mubarak’s 100,000-strong secret police force from shredding files that contain evidence of torture and human rights abuses. Yesterday 47 members of the secret police were arrested and held in custody.

And Hugh Tomlinson in Bahrein reports that anti-government protesters there entering their fourth week of demonstrations against the government, while in Yemen protesters were today planning to hold a “Day of No Return” protest in Sanaa and other major cities as they step up their efforts to oust President Saleh.