• Syrian city of Hama continues to put up resistance
• Libyan rebels edge towards Tripoli from east and west
• Chinese diplomat visits Libyan opposition
2.12pm: More than 700 people have been arrested in the Syrian Hama in the last 24 hours, according to the citizen journalist network Avaaz. It also names 24 people who have been killed in the crackdown.
Avaaz claimed that water and electricity had been cut off in the city. But a resident told the Guardian that electricity had been switched back on after activists threatened to attack a power station that supplies other parts of Syria.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that about 1,000 people had fled the city, according to Al-Jazeera.
2.02pm: CNN has a compelling undercover report on a clandestine group of Damascus doctors treating those injured in the protests in Syria in make shift field hospital. The report, which was spotted by reader oivejoivej, was put together with graphic YouTube footage of injured protesters.
_
1.47pm: Another crack in the Nato alliance over Libya?
The Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said he had opposed the decision to go to war but was forced into it by the Italian parliament, Reuters reports.
'I was against this measure as everyone knows,' Berlusconi told a book presentation.'I had my hands tied by the vote of the parliament of my country.'
Italian support for the campaign has always been weak. Italian jets joined the campaign in late April after Italy initially said it would take no part in air strikes citing Italy's colonial rule.
Last month foreign minister Franco Frattini said civilian deaths from the airstrikes threatened Nato's credibility.
12.52pm: Activists in the Egyptian capital Cairo took part in the fourth TweetNadwa last night to discuss the Economy and Social Justice. The initiative is kind of highbrow tweetup in speakers are limited to 140-second contributions to discuss Egypt's future.
American blogger Michael Kremer described the 'inspiring' atmosphere.
It was impossible not to be inspired by several hundred people voluntarily coming together to talk about the future of their country. The level of energy and passion in the room – fed by the feeling that there is a real window of opportunity right now to shape Egypt's political and economic future – was infectious.
But he seemed slightly unnerved when the discussion took a leftist turn.
Tonight's topic was social justice, and the conversation mainly focused on economics. The microphone swiftly changed hands in the beginning of the meeting, with most of the attendees striking idealistic notes about the necessity of improving healthcare and education, raising the minimum wage, etc. Nothing revolutionary, but nevertheless a good way to start the program. After a brief digression in which the attendees argued amongst themselves about how the stock market functioned and whether it was or wasn't necessary for the country's future, the discussion heated up when a proud Communist stood up and admonished the crowd for not focusing on the real issues.
'You all are forgetting the critical problem here,' he declared, 'we need to stop talking about the minimum wage and the stock market and start talking about how to end the capitalist plague that is destroying our country! We must return to the basics and realize that capitalism is inherently unfair!'
The crowd's attention instantly turned to broad, ideological issues. Instead of clapping, the moderator told the audience members to raise their arms and wave their hands when they agreed with a certain point, and judging by the amount of raised hands and smiles after that mini-Communist manifesto, the man had many allies in the room.
Citizen journalist Lilian Wagdy published this Flickr gallery of the event.
_
12.03pm: MEPs have called for humanitarian corridors to be set up help those fleeing the violence in Syria, according to a report by the European Parliament.
Besides calling on the UN security council to pass a resolution condemning Syria, MEPs urged the other EU institutions to press the UN to help the Turkish and Lebanese authorities to set up a humanitarian corridor at their borders with this country.
11.51am: Graffiti has popped all over Cairo announcing tomorrow's demonstration in Tahrir Square, Cairo-based photographer Themba Lewis says.
She says the bystanders in this photograph are watching a protest march in solidarity with Suez demonstrators, who yesterday attacked police in pitched battles over the release of police officers charged with killing protesters. The photo was taken in Midan Talaat Harb, just a few minutes from Tahrir Square, she says.
_
11.28am: A general strike in the rebellious Syrian city of Hama has turned the city into a 'ghost town', activists and resident Omar told me in telephone interview.
Omar said electricity had been been switch back on after activists threatened to switch off a power line that would have cut power to large swaths of Syria, Omar claimed. He confirmed that 28 people have been killed in the city since the army began a crackdown on the city. Activist had published their names on a Facebook page he said.
He also claimed that the army tanks had withdrawn from the edge of the city.
Activists say 20 people were injured after shooting on the Hama's Mazreb Bridge.
General strike in #Hama after shooting in Mazreb Bridge which caused 20 injured most of them in Horani hospital #Syria
Omar said this was only a minor incident and that the city was largely calm. 'I'm not afraid the city is protecting us,' he said.
Video from Hama dated today appears to back Omar's claim that the city is deserted as a result of the strike.
_
10.31am: Libya has accused Nato of backing the rebels advance on Tripoli, in breach of the its UN mandate, the Global Post reports.
Deputy foreign ninister Khaled Kaim told AP Nato targeted police checkpoints in the Nafusa mountains southwest of Tripoli ahead of a rebel advance on al-Qawalish.
He claimed rebels were later pushed back from Qawalish. Kaim said: 'The aim of these attacks is to help the rebels to advance. But I assure you, it will be another failure for them.'
A list of the latest targets hit by Nato appears to show that airstrike are backing the rebels advance.
The Guardian's interactive on the Nato bombing campaign has been updated to include Nato's latest 'key hits'.
Nato lists them as:
In the vicinity of Brega: 1 Military Refuelling Equipment, 8 Armed Vehicles, 2 Armoured Fighting Vehicles, 1 Truck. In the vicinity of Gharyan: 1 Anti-Aircraft Gun.
In the vicinity of Misratah: 3 Armed Vehicles. In the vicinity of Waddan: 1 Military Storage Facility. In the vicinity of Yafran: 1 Artillery Piece, 1 Armed Vehicle. In the vicinity of Zlitan: 8 Armed Vehicles. In the vicinity of Zintan: 1 Armed Vehicle.
The Middle East analyst Juan Cole, argues that Nato's action falls within the UN resolution.
Gaddafi made his an outlaw state and under these circumstances the UN resolution authorizes Nato action to prevent him from committing further atrocities. The only practical way to do so, given his defiance and aggression with heavy weapons, is to hit them where they are committing aggression and to strengthen the Free Libya forces.
10.20am: Libyan rebels claim they are clearing Gaddafi's forces from the western town of al-Qawalish, al-Jazeera reports from Zintan.
_
10.02am: 'Gaddafi is crumbling and I predict he will fall,' US Senator John McCain told the BBC Radio 4's Today programme.
He claimed there was a humanitarian imperative to fight Gaddafi but it was also important for national security of European countries because of Gaddafi's threat to attack Europe.
9.25am: A new Guardian video explores how Egypt's political divisions are played out in the rivalry between Cairo's biggest football teams Al Ahly and Zamalek.
_
8.24am: Welcome to Middle East Live. On the surface the capital cities of Libya and Syria are staying loyal to their respective governments. But the Guardian correspondents in both Tripoli and Damascus have uncovered simmering discontent.
First, David Smith in Tripoli:
Numerous witnesses tell the same story: that when night falls, out come the police checkpoints aimed at locking down restive districts, but so too do rebel militas opposed to Muammar Gaddafi. Under cover of darkness, it is said, they emerge from hiding to ambush his security forces. In some neighbourhoods the gun battles rage every night, but the bodies of those killed and all other traces are swiftly removed.
With security tight and little sign of a major uprising in Tripoli, these audacious guerrilla tactics appear to be the rebels' best hope of chipping away at the Libyan leader's defences.
Now Nidaa Hassan, a pseudonym of a journalist in Damascus, describes life in Syrian capital:
Normality belies a city that may not yet have been rocked by the protest movement, but has been torn apart under the surface. The protests and the regime's violent response – which it has blamed on armed gangs of foreigners and extremists – triggered an emotional reaction in the capital that has shifted from denial and confusion to anger and, finally, polarisation...
Everyone knows the calm in the centre may not last. Stories of detention and torture circulate widely, opening eyes to the brutality of the regime, which under Assad's rule has positioned itself as reformist, with some success, far from the dark days of his father's time in power.
A cafe customer tells her:
This country does not belong to Assad and we need to make that clear. Damascus's day will come because the whole country, including here, has already witnessed a revolution in horizons and aspirations.
In Hama, 130 miles north of Damascus, the city is open revolt in a standoff with security forces who have encircled the city.
One resident told the Guardian:
We are protecting the central square area. We have checkpoints and roadblocks of burning tyres.
If the boys manning the checkpoints see security forces coming, they shout, everyone picks up that shout, and people go inside. So far they haven't broken through into the city centre being protected.
'The Syrian people's fight for freedom promises to be long, uncertain, and violent,' warns Syria watcher Gary Gambill in Foreign Policy magazine.
The crux of the problem is Syria's unique minority-dominated power structure, which is most closely comparable to Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Alawites, a heterodox Islamic sect comprising roughly 12 percent of Syria's population, may not be the privileged minority suggested by some Western media reports, but they provide both the brains and the muscle for a secular authoritarian political order that would otherwise be untenable.
Alawite solidarity renders the loyalty of the internal military-security apparatus nearly inviolable, enabling Assad to mete out a level of repression far beyond the capacity of most autocrats.
But US officials are describing events in Hama as a possible turning point in the uprising, according to the Washington Post. One said:
The support base is eroding, and particularly among the business elite.These guys carry a lot of weight, and until now they have benefited from the regime. Now they're looking for an alternative, and Assad is not part of the solution.
Here are some of the other main developments in the region:
Libya
• Senior Chinese diplomat, Chen Xiaodong, has called for talks to end the conflict in Libya. He made the plea after a meeting with members of the opposition National Transition Council in Benghazi.
• Libyan rebels have launched an apparently co-ordinated two-pronged offensive against pro-Gaddafi forces, striking from bases in the western mountains south-west of Tripoli and from the besieged city of Misrata, 130 miles to the east.
• Analysts are concerned about the possibility of 'catastrophic success' in Libya. The Guardian's Simon Tisdall explains:
In this scenario, the negotiated settlement between regime and rebels and the orderly departure from power of Muammar Gaddafi that is the UN and Nato's stated aim does not happen. Instead, Gaddafi is killed or flees, his government implodes, the rebels' national transitional council splinters into rival power bases, and unpaid army units and police, renegade mercenaries and tribal militias (armed in some cases by France) commence battle for the nation's oil wealth.
Egypt
• The Minister of the Interior Mansour al-Essawy has promised a shake up of the police force ahead of planned rally in Cairo's Tahrir Square tomorrow.
• Hundreds of protesters pelted the security headquarters in the Egyptian city of Suez with rocks on Wednesday, angered by a court's decision to uphold the release of seven policemen facing trials for allegedly killing protesters during the country's uprising.
Comments