• Erdogan visits Libya as battle for Sirte continues
• Turkey accused of handing over senior defector to Syria
• Niger resists attempts to return Gaddafi loyalists
11.10am: The Guardian's Middle East editor Ian Black is now in Tripoli and has filed this on the fight for Sirte and Bani Walid.
Libyan rebel fighters are involved in heavy fighting in a final battle to capture Muammar Gaddafi's hometown of Sirte, one of the last three significant strongholds still held by the old regime.
Rebels are also advancing in strength on Bani Walid, a key tribal centre south of Tripoli where the dictator's fugitive son Saif al-Islam is said to have been sighted in recent days. Reports from the rebel front line described civilians leaving the town and explosions and heavy gunfire inside it.
Claims on Thursday night that Sirte had fallen to forces loyal to the National Transitional Council gave way to a standoff followed by renewed clashes this morning. An Al-Jazeera correspondent described heavy fighting and intense use of snipers around the industrial zone to the south west of the town.
Sirte, on the Mediterranean coast between Tripoli and Benghazi, was hit repeatedly by Nato missiles and bombs from the start of the conflict in March, but has remained in the hands of Gaddafi forces since. If it does fall, the rebels will control Libya's the entire Mediterranean coast.
Yousif bin Yousif, a rebel commander from Misrata, told Al Jazeera that the entrances to the city were in their hands as elements of the 32nd Brigade - the elite unit commanded by Gaddafi's son Khamis – were holed up in villas on the coast. The rebels said they were expecting a last stand in the centre of town.
The Misrata rebel council said the Sirte attack was being mounted by 900 "technicals," flatbed pickup trucks mounted with machineguns or rocket launchers. Attempts were made to persuade Gaddafi forces – many from his Gadadfa tribe- to surrender but they responded by firing Grad rockets.
Bani Walid is the centre of the powerful Warfallah tribe. Its capture will leave only Sebha in the south on the edge of the Sahara in the hands of the old regime.
Amidst mounting excitement about the latest military advances consolidating the February revolution, Libyans are today marking the 80th anniversary of the 1931 execution of Omar al-Mukhtar, hero of the resistance to Italian colonialists. Residents of Benghazi are planning a big rally to commemorate him.
Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey's prime minister, has meanwhile arrived in Tripoli as part an "Arab Spring" tour that took him to Egypt and Tunisia earlier this week, and which he has been using to promote Turkey's ambitious regional role and drum up business. Turkish media reported complaints that the long-planned had been deliberately upstaged by Nicholas Sarkozy and David Cameron on Thursday.
11.06am: There appears to be a fresh push by anti-Gaddafi forces against two of the ousted dictator's remaining strongholds.
Both Reuters and AP report Libyan fighters have been streaming into Bani Walid, 180 km (110 miles) south of Tripoli and that explosions and heavy gunfire were heard. Fighters say they have seized the valley leading into centre of Bani Walid from Gaddafi forces and are advancing on the central stronghold, according to al-Arabiya.
Al-Jazeera is reporting fierce battles in Sirte, with trucks and tanks pouring into Gaddafi's hometown. It says there have been many casualties among among soldiers loyal to the deposed Libyan leader. It appears reports on Thursday that forces loyal to Libya's new rulers were premature, although the NTC is still claiming to be in control of certain areas of the town. A council spokesman told al-Jazeera that the situation for civilians is "very concerning" with no electricity or running water and food stocks very low.
The NTC fighters have taken control of Sirte's airport, according to al-Jazeera Arabic.
10.57am: The new Syrian opposition council has already annoyed the Assad regime by meeting the head of the Arab League Nabil al-Arabi,
Syria's representative on the league, Yousef Ahmad sent an angry letter to al-Arabi accusing him of violating the league's charter.
10.42am: Erdogan has arrived in the Tripoli, according to AP.
10.16am: Activist and human rights campaigner have been marking the six month anniversary of the Syrian uprising by compiling estimates of the number of people killed in the government's crackdown.
Avaaz says a team of 60 human rights investigators have verified the names of 3,004 people killed by the regime in some 127 towns across the country.
Wissam Tarif, founder of Insan and a campaigner at Avaaz, said:
The only effective means of pressuring the regime is for immediate and tough action at the UN Security Council, but as long as India, Russia, South Africa and China block a UNSC resolution, they allow President Assad to continue to torture and kill innocent Syrian civilians. If they do not act now, these countries will have the blood of more than 3,000 people on their hands.
The Local Coordination Committee, a group which publicises the protests, puts the figure deathtoll at 2934 people, including 481 soldiers.
It has this regional breakdown of the casualties.
Homs: 761
Daraa: 594
Hama: 350
Idlib: 319
Damascus suburbs: 243
Lattakia: 182
Deir Ezzor: 125
Damascus: 90
Aleppo: 44
Tartous: 28
Swaida: 10
Raqqa: 8
Hasaka: 7
Qamishli: 5
Number of martyrs who were tortured to death is 108 until now.
Earlier this month, the UN estimated that more than 2,600 people had been killed in the crackdown. Last night UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon called for international action against Syria, accusing President Assad of "escalating violence and repression".
He told a news conference: "It's been almost six months. I have been speaking with him several times, and he made all these promises, but these promises have become now broken promises."
10.07am: The number of Nato air strikes against Sirte have gone past the 300 mark with another 16 targets hit in the coastal town on Thursday.
In the vicinity of Sirte: 1 Military Storage Facility, 2 Armed Vehicles, 1 Tank, 4 Multiple Rocket Launchers, 8 Air Missile Systems.
In the vicinity of Waddan: 1 Multiple Rocket Launcher.
In the vicinity of Sebha: Several Armoured Vehicles, 1 Multiple Rocket Launcher, 1 Tank, 5 Armed Vehicles.
8.33am: Welcome to Middle East Live. Here's a round up of the latest developments:
Libya
• Turkey's prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan will visit Tripoli and Benghazi today a day after David Cameron and Nicolas Sarkozy were given a hero's welcome in the cities. "Libyans will never forget Turkey's assistance," chairman of the National Transitional Council Mustafa Abdul Jalil told the Turkish news agency Anatolia, ahead of the visit. It also reported that the Rixos hotel hotel is reopened in time for Erdogan's arrival.
• Fierce fighting continues for control of Gaddafi's home town of Sirte. Last night Sirte was reported to have fallen.. But today there were reports that Gaddafi loyalists are still resisting, and have pushed back fighters from the new government.
• Niger's foreign minister Mohamed Bazoum has rejected US claims that his government is holding Muammar Gaddafi's son Saadi under house arrest. In an interview with the Telegraph he suggested that Niger would resist French and Libyan efforts to hand over senior Gaddafi loyalists who have fled across the border.
Bazoum said:
There is a lot of pressure on us that we would like to avoid and we will use what means we have to avoid it but if people come and there are no laws against that we will respect their right to stay.
• Sir Richard Dearlove, who was head of MI6 when British agents helped to send Muammar Gaddafi's opponents back to Libya, where they were tortured, said co-operation with countries with poor human rights records had always been cleared by ministers. "It has always been pretty clear that our governments in the UK have accepted that danger and difficulty and have given political clearance for that sort of co-operation," he told a meeting of the Henry Jackson Society, a foreign policy international thinktank.
• There has been a mixed reaction in the British press to Cameron and Sarkozy's Libya visit.
The Daily Mail's sketch writer Quentin Letts said the trip was a public relations exercise.
Did our prime minister not look in his element as he gladhanded the liberated Libyans? Was the quiff of his fringe not just so? Savour the grainy picture quality of his press conference, with the Union Jack behind him. You would never have guessed that just a few hours earlier he had risen from his own bed at No 10 and, for all we know, had a bowl of Frosties.
Did you see how he was in Tripoli first, beating the French president by several minutes? Shades of Amundsen v Scott to the South Pole. M Sarkozy, for once, was not the smallest chap on parade. The two Libyan leaders were titches. Tall Mr Cameron was a giant among ducklings. By the way, get out of my camera shot, Hague.
The two leaders will savour the spontaneous, and slightly chaotic reception, they received in Benghazi for years to come, writes the Guardian's chief political correspondent Nicholas Watt.
Europe's only two military powers, who had a spectacular falling out over Iraq, worked together to change the course of history in North Africa.
The Guardian's foreign affairs columnist Simon Tisdall is more cynical. "This was, first and foremost, the Dave and Sarko spoils of war tour … though they don't say so, they still have those lovely oil contracts to look forward to," he writes.
Sarkozy and Cameron's trip was premature, argues the Independent.
With the situation in Libya still so far from a substantive conclusion, yesterday's ceremonials had strong tinges of both hubris and circus. It was too soon for either.
Syria
• Activists have accused Turkey of handing over a senior army officer who deserted from the Assad regime in a swap deal with Damascus involving Kurdish militants. Syrian state TV broadcast a "confession" of Lieutenant Colonel Hussein al-Harmoush last night two weeks after he went missing from refugee camp in southern Turkey. Wissam Tarif from the human rights organisation Avaaz said: "We have heard from the Kurds that there has been a deal done," he said.
During his TV "confession" Harmoush said he returned to Syria because of disillusionment with the opposition.
Leading dissident Ammar Abdulhamid said Harmoush's confirmed the non-violent nature of the protest movement. "The only people who would think of this interview as damning are the very people who keep seeing armed gangs where none existed," he writes.
• Six months after the start of the Syrian uprising, the opposition has announced a 140-member Syrian national council, the BBC reports. Around 60% of the council consists of opposition members inside Syria with rest made up of members of the Syrian diaspora. The group will draw comparisons with the National Transitional Council in Libya, the BBC said.
Abdulhamid illustrates divisions in the Syrian opposition by claiming the initiative was the work of "an assortment of Islamists and leftists" with a "few token liberal elements". He branded the opposition as "criminally incompetent".
Palestinian territories
The US state department says it is still trying to persuade the Palestinians to negotiate with Israelis rather than submit its bid for statehood at the United Nations. But diplomats have tried without success to persuade the Palestinian leaders to skip or modify the bid, according to the New York Times.
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