The Fourth Horn Returns (Daniel 8)

Gunfire erupts outside Libyan parliament

The Fourth Horn Returns

Clashes have erupted outside the Libyan parliament in the capital, Tripoli, in an attack being claimed by forces loyal to a retired army general accused of launching a coup attempt.

Forces said to be loyal to a retired Libyan major general, Khalifa Haftar, stormed the General National Congress on Sunday and challenged the legitimacy of parliament.

Al Jazeera’s Omar al-Saleh, reporting from Tripoli, said the city had “turned into somewhat a battlefield“.

Saleh quoted eyewitnesses as saying a large convoy of vehicles with heavy machine guns stormed Congress. “There were a few cars set on fire. There was heavy fighting. The situation is very tense.”
At least two people died and as many as 55 were wounded as a result of the violence.

Saleh said a spokeman for Haftar claimed the attackers were affiliated with Haftar’s forces.
A former military police officer, Colonel Mukhtar Fernana, read out a statement on al-Ahrar television on behalf of Haftar. “We announce the freezing of the GNC,” Fernana said, according to Reuters news agency. It is not clear where he gave the address.

Fernana also said parliament should hand power to the 60-member body elected to rewrite Libya’s constitution.

The Libyan News Agency said the forces attacking parliament belonged to the Zintan brigade, a rebel group from 170km south-west of Tripoli, which controls the city’s international airport.

But Zintan forces have not yet said the attack was undertaken for Haftar.

Benghazi clashes

The retired general has been carrying out a military campaign in Benghazi – using government aircraft and troops without authorisation – against Islamist militias since Friday.

At least 70 people have died and another 140 have been injured in the campaign.

Haftar vowed to press on with his operation after Libya’s interim Prime Minister Abdullah al-Thinni on Saturday denounced his forces as “outlaws” and called on all parties to observe restraint.

On Sunday he was preparing to renew his offensive in the eastern city after being accused by the authorities of an attempted coup.

In a press conference on Sunday, he denied his actions amounted to a coup attempt.

“This is not a coup against the state and we are not seeking power and authority,” Haftar said. “Terrorism and its servants want it to be a battle so let it be an honourable one.”

Early on Monday, the violence escalated as unknown attackers fired rockets at Benghazi’s Benina airport. Authorities had closed the airport on Friday for security reasons.

Libya has been struggling with chaos as its government, parliament and nascent armed forces are unable to impose their authority over brigades of former rebels and militias who helped oust Muammar Gaddafi in 2011 but now defy the state.

Libyan Yellow Cake Still Available

Libyan yellow cake still available

Libya government announced on 5 February 2014 that it has destroyed its entire chemical arsenal. It was announced by the Foreign Minister of Libya, Mohammed Abdelaziz. The chemical arsenal destroyed included bombs and artillery shells filled with mustard gas.
Organisation for Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) confirmed that Libya has become totally free of usable chemical weapons that might present a potential threat to the security of local communities, the environment and neighbouring countries. Organisation for Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) visited the city of al-Raogha to inspect the warehouse where Libya’s largest outstanding stockpile of mustard gas was present. Libya still holds stocks of low-grade precursor chemicals but that programme has been put in place to destroy them by the end of 2016.

Since the OPCW covered only Gaddafi’s chemical weapons programme and it has not addressed the stocks of concentrated uranium or yellowcake that it acquired in its bid for a nuclear weapon.(emphasis added)

Analysis
Gaddafi signed the chemical weapons convention and joined the OPCW in 2004. After Libya signed the treaty, Gaddafi’s regime claimed that they destroyed about 54 percent of its mustard gas stocks and about 40 percent of the chemicals used to manufacture the substance and 3500 bombs.
In 2011 a large stock of yellow cake was discovered at arms depot in southern city of Sebha. Since then the stock pile was secured in collaboration with International Atomic Energy Agency. The Centre for Strategic Studies asked the Libyan authorities to ensure the concentrated uranium will be used in industrial, agricultural development and in production of clean energy for the benefits of Libyans.
The process of disarmament was supervised by OPCW experts in 2012 and intensified in 2013 with the signing of a deal with Washington. There was concern that the stockpiles might not fall into the hands of ex-rebel militias.

All It Takes Is Yellowcake!

Dumped in the desert ... Gaddafi’s yellowcake stockpile

Sitting in row after row, each 15 long by four high, the blue barrels are as frightening as any remnant of the Gaddafi regime.

A rebel fighter among the yellowcake drums in the warehouse near the city of Sabha. The stockpile was abandoned and unguarded Photo: DAVID ROSE

By Richard Spencer, Sabha

Some are marked radioactive, as were the open plastic bags alongside.

The powder they contain appears to be yellowcake uranium from neighbouring Niger. Yet when they were discovered by advancing rebel forces last week, they were abandoned, in tumbledown warehouses protected only by a low wall.

Niger mines yellowcake under a strict security regime designed to ensure none of it falls into the hands of illicit networks. But post-Gaddafi Libya affords little or no protection to this vast haul of material, which if refined to high levels of purity is the essential element of a nuclear bomb.

The Daily Telegraph reported last week that Iran, which is pursuing underground nuclear programmes, had joined in the looting of Libyan weaponry.

Despite the dangers, international atomic agencies and Libya’s rebels say it will take weeks to put safeguards in place.

There are at least 10,000 drums with a total capacity of two million litres, though most have not been opened and checked for their contents. They are being stored not far from the southern desert city of Sabha.
The International Atomic Energy Agency says it knew that Col Muammar Gaddafi had stockpiled yellowcake uranium near Sabha – a relic of the years when he tried to develop nuclear weapons after obtaining blueprints from the Pakistani scientist, AQ Khan.
“We can confirm that there is yellowcake stored in drums at a site near Sabha in central Libya,” a spokesman said. “The IAEA has tentatively scheduled safeguard activities at this location once the situation in the country stabilises.”
After agreeing to dismantle the programme in 2003, Gaddafi was supposed to have given up all his nuclear technology. He was also supposed to have given up chemical weapons, but it is known he still had mustard gas awaiting disposal.
A WikiLeaks cable disclosed that two years ago he was trying to sell 1,000 metric tons of yellowcake on the world market. No one expected such a valuable commodity to have been left dumped in the desert.
Sabha was an important stronghold for Gaddafi, who spent part of his youth here, and many of the locals are from the Gaddafi tribe. Abdullah Senussi, his security chief, right-hand man and brother-in-law, is from a town 50 miles to the north.
But the city was only lightly defended. A total of 12 rebels died in the fighting, with just one or two parts of the town resisting at all.
Having driven out the remnants of the Gaddafi forces towards the Algerian border, the rebel troops said they were ordered to secure former military bases — a standard practice adopted belatedly to stop weapons stockpiles going missing.
They found the storage facility containing the radioactive drums totally unguarded. “I don’t think it’s ever been guarded,” said Musbah al-Mangoush, an agricultural engineer from the town who escaped Gaddafi’s grip three months ago and returned at the head of a brigade of troops from Benghazi.
“This was a military base until the 1990s, but then it was abandoned. There was no one here.”
In neighbouring sheds are rusting trucks, old fuel tanks, and surface-to-air missiles covered in pigeon droppings.
It is not clear how long the material has been there. Mohammed Othman, whose family owns a farm five miles further up the track away from Sabha, says soldiers were seen unloading trucks in the area a year ago. Mr Mangoush, on the other hand, links the find to what he claims is a high level of miscarriage and deformity in babies in the area, suggesting a longer term presence.
Mustafa Abdul Jalil, the president of the provisional government, the National Transitional Council, said at a press conference on Sunday that a second find of illegal material had been made near the town of Waddan — believed to be mustard gas. “There are weapons believed to be internationally forbidden, and they are under our control,” he said.
The United States previously said that Gaddafi’s yellowcake stocks were held at the town of Tajoura east of Tripoli and were “secure”.
The real site is now guarded by half a dozen rebel troops.
Fighting has moved on to the border town of Ghat, leaving virtually all the south of Libya, with its important oilfields, in the hands of the rebels.
Of Gaddafi himself, there is now no sign.
“Tell us if you find him,” is the commonest response to questions concerning his whereabouts.