Syria, Bahrain, Libya (and Beyond) LiveBlog: Once Again They Rallied

See also Syria Video Feature: Saturday Night's Protests --- Executing Assad, Burning Russian Flag, and Calling for Protection
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Syria Video Special: "We'll Continue until the Regime is Toppled"
Bahrain Feature: Repression Tears Apart a Country
Friday's Syria, Bahrain, Libya (and Beyond) LiveBlog: Watching the Protests

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1930 GMT: Claimed footage of security forces shooting at protesters today in the Damascus suburb of Douma:

1925 GMT: We have posted a series of clips from tonight's protests in Syria in a separate video feature.

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Syria, Bahrain, Libya (and Beyond) LiveBlog: Watching the Protests

2048 GMT: It may be nearly midnight in Bahrain, but the struggle between the protesters and the police continues. A source in Sitra reports:

"23:45 At the moment there is a helicopter flying on Sitra with spot light searching for protesters"

2036 GMT: A potentially very important video has been posted in our separate entry. Protesters gathered tonight in AL Hoole, Homs, unfurl a large banner with a clear request, written in both English and Arabic:

"No Fly Zone"

2023 GMT: We've posted a separate video feature tonight.

Today was busy, and with so many dramatic pictures, videos, and nuggets of news, the scale of the protests can easily be overlooked. In the liveblog, we have focused on the violence, but what occurred this Friday, like many others, was another mass demonstration of peaceful protesters, in nearly every corner of the country, demanding the resignation of those responsible for the violence.

Among the violence, the peaceful protests are being eclipsed by the media, but they have not gone away.

See the entry, Syria Video Special: "We'll Continue until the Regime is Toppled"

1952 GMT: WARNING, this video is VERY hard to watch. Bullets snap (which means they were very close) around a cameraman, as unarmed protesters flee back up the street, carrying a man who was apparently shot in the head. The video was reportedly taken today in Homs. It's very graphic:

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Syria, Libya (and Beyond) LiveBlog: Protests, Funerals, and Burning Flags

2135 GMT: Earlier tonight, James Miller --- from a first-hand source in Bahrain --- reported on the death of Sayed Jawad from inhalation of tear gas fired by security forces (see 2011 and 2052 GMT).

This is the full statement just released by the regime's Bahrain News Agency:

A thirty-five year old Bahraini sickle cell patient has today passed away at Salmaniya Medical Complex.

2135 GMT: Earlier tonight, James Miller --- from a first-hand source in Bahrain --- reported on the death of Sayed Jawad from inhalation of tear gas fired by security forces (see 2011 and 2052 GMT).

Well, not according to the regime --- this is the full statement just released by the Bahrain News Agency:

A thirty-five year old Bahraini sickle cell patient has today passed away at Salmaniya Medical Complex.

“Sayyed Jawad Ahmed, from Sitra, died at 6.45 pm after suffering Acute Respiratory Syndrome Distress”, Health Ministry Public Relations director said.

2130 GMT: The pointed message from protesters in Homs tonight: "Where is Nabil Al-Arabi [Arab League Secretary-General]?", "Where is the Russian President?", "Where are the Arabs?"

In Anadan in Aleppo Province, the crowd chants,"Syria wants freedom":

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Syria, Libya (and Beyond) LiveBlog: Towards a Civil State?

Claimed footage of a mass funeral procession for Ezzat al-Baidee, the teenager whose death in the Damascus suburb of Douma on Monday was captured on video

See also When Israel & Turkey Co-operated: West Jerusalem Asks Ankara for Help with Hamas

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2040 GMT: A series of videos from around Homs in Syria tonight --- the Waar district:

Inshaat:

Ghouta:

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Libya, Syria (and Beyond) LiveBlog: The Battle for Sirte

2015 GMT: Niger's Minister of Justice has said that former Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi's son Saadi entered the country on Saturday.

"He was in a convoy of nine people. They were intercepted heading in the direction of [the northern Niger town of] Agadez." Marou Adamou told a news conference. Two other convoys of Qaddafi loyalists have entered the town, which lies to the south of Libya, in the past week.

"We were not informed of their arrival," said Adamou. He said he expected the Qaddafi group to be transferred to the capital Niamey on Monday or Tuesday.

2010 GMT: A protest in Idlib in northwest Syria tonight:

Qorieh in the northeast:

Amuda in the northeast:

And a large protest in Jarjanaz in the northwest earlier today:

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Libya Snapshot: The TV Producer Keeping Qaddafi on the Air (Black)

Former Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi may be getting a bad press these days, but there is one media figure who is still a fan. Meet the man who is keeping Muammar --- wherever he might be --- on the air....

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Syria, Libya (and Beyond) LiveBlog: Expecting Defiance, Watching for Defections

See also See also Syria Video Special: Friday's Protests of Defiance --- Set 3
Syria Video Special: Friday's Protests of Defiance --- Set 2
Syria Video Special: Friday's Protests of Defiance --- Set 1
Syria Feature: Defecting Military Officers Tell Their Stories
Egypt Opinion: "Lest We Forget" Why the Revolution Is Worthwhile
Israel Mystery: Who Carried out the Bus Attack in Eilat?
Syria Special: Syrian Ambassador to US Responds to Accusations
Thursday's Syria, Libya (and Beyond) Liveblog: Protests in Homs Defy Violence

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2045 GMT: Another clip of the mass rally, organised by the opposition party Al Wefaq (see 1629 GMT), in Bahrain today:

2012 GMT: Protesters have removed most of the wall around the Israeli embassy in Cairo and a protester has once again scaled the 15-story building in order to remove the Israeli flag.

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Libya Feature: The Caterer, The Memory Stick, and the Fall of Qaddafi's Tripoli (Nakhoul)

Colonel Muammar Gaddafi's regime was delivered by a caterer, on a memory stick.

Abdel Majid Mlegta ran the companies that supplied meals to Libyan government departments including the interior ministry. The job was "easy," he told Reuters last week. "I built good relations with officers. I wanted to serve my country."

But in the first few weeks of the uprising, he secretly began to work for the rebels. He recruited sympathizers at the nerve center of the Gaddafi government, pinpointed its weak links and its command-and-control strength in Tripoli, and passed that information onto the rebel leadership on a series of flash memory cards.

The first was handed to him, he says, by Gaddafi military intelligence and security officers. It contained information about seven key operations rooms in the capital, including internal security, the Gaddafi revolutionary committees, the popular guards --- as Gaddafi's voluntary armed militia was known -- and military intelligence.

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Libya Special: A Guide to The New Political Landscape (Hussain)

The Guardian's Ghaffar Hussain attempts to answer the question on many people's minds this week - After Qaddafi, and after the National Transitional Council, what happens next in Libya? He then gives a provocative subtitle:

"A post-Gaddafi Libya will see liberals, Islamists and secularists jostling for position with the largest grouping: nationalists"

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The ousting of the Gaddafi clan and the collapse of their jamahiriya system, has left many feeling unsure about Libya's political future. After all, the National Transitional Council (NTC) is not a political party and won't exist beyond the first elections. Many of its members, being having been officials in Gaddafi's regime, are unlikely to seek executive political positions.

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Libya, Syria (and Beyond) LiveBlog: Closing In on Qaddafi's Hometown

2018 GMT: Al Arabiya, Sky News, and our earlier report seem to be all leaning on a single source that Khamis Qaddafi has been killed. Andy Carvin asks, and we echo, where is the body? Why the rush to bury him? Are there pictures? Video? DNA samples?

The outside world has been burned by these sorts of reports before. During the fall of Tripoli, there were multiple reports, from sources inside the NTC, that many of Qaddafi's sons were detained. Those reports turned out to be false, and the only reliable report, that Mohammed Qaddafi was captured, was undone by his escape.

So far, we remain skeptical.

1911 GMT: Al Jazeera provides us this update, details on the claimed killing of Qaddafi's son and military commander, Khamis Qaddafi:

Khamis Gaddafi, Muammar Gaddafi's son, was killed in a battle between Tarhoni and Bin Walid on Sunday, according to a rebel commander in Tripoli who spoke to Al Arabiya.

Senior rebel officer, Colonel Al-Mahdi Al-Haragi, in charge of the Tripoli Brigade of the rebel army, told the Reuters news agency he had confirmation that Khamis was badly wounded in the clash near Ben Walid and Tarhoni.

He was taken to a hospital but died of his wounds and was buried in the area, Al-Haragi told Reuters, without giving the timing.

No independent confirmation of the death was available.

1900 GMT: A very safe, very dry James Miller finally has internet access, and so is able to update the readers on two major developments in Libya...

The first development is that Algerian Foreign Minister is claiming that Muammar Qaddafi's wife, daughter, two of his sons, and their children have crossed over the border into Algeria:

The Egyptian news agency MENA, quoting unidentified rebel fighters, had reported from Tripoli over the weekend that six armored Mercedes sedans, possibly carrying Gadhafi's sons or other top regime figures, had crossed the border at the southwestern Libyan town of Ghadamis into Algeria. Algeria's Foreign Ministry had denied that report.

Ahmed Jibril, an aide to rebel National Transitional Council head Mustafa Abdul-Jalil, said if the report of Ghadafi relatives in Algeria is true, "we will demand that Algerian authorities hand them over to Libya to be tried before Libyan courts."

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