AlJazeera on April 9 reports from a refugee camp in Tunisia, where African migrants who have fled Libya tell both of being threatened and expelled from the country by rebel forces—and being press-ganged by Qaddafi's military and forced to fight under pain of deportation. The interviewed migrants are from Nigeria, Niger, Mali and Ghana. One worker from Ghana said he was abducted by the Libyan military when soldiers stormed his house in Sirte: "They asked us why we were trying to leave the country and that we must stay to fight for when the Americans come." Some of the interviewed migrants had deserted Qaddafi's forces, while others were forced to flee by rebels under accusation of being Qaddafi collaborators.

Gen. Abdelfatah Yunis, commander of Libya's rebel forces, said April 7 that NATO apologized for mistakenly hitting a column of rebel tanks near the eastern town of Ajdabiya. Yunis said the deadly air-strike occurred despite a warning to NATO that the tanks were being moved to the front line. By conflicting reports, the air-strike killed between four and 134 rebel fighters. NATO says it is investigating the incident. "We would like to receive answers about what happened. We would like a rational and convincing explanation," Gen. Yunis said. (BBC News, April 7) High-level US diplomatic figures from the US, UK and France are meanwhile said to have met with leading members of the Transitional National Council (TNC) to discuss (ostensibly "humanitarian") aid to the rebels. Only France, Italy and Qatar have thus far officially recognized the rebels as the legitimate government of Libya. (AFP, April 7)

The Independent reports April 3 eye-witness accounts that "Military and diplomatic operatives from the US and Western Europe—usually described as experts, consultants and advisers—turned up in the rebel capital, Benghazi. These include UK personnel, among them a former Royal Navy officer who had recently served as a diplomat in Afghanistan. He said he was in Libya as a consultant to the opposition administration." The word comes as Reuters reports that Tripoli has dispatched deputy foreign minister Abdelati Obeidi to Athens in a diplomatic initiative to end the conflict.

Moammar Qaddafi's regime rejected a rebel offer of a ceasefire April 1, as fighting continued for the rebel-held city of Misrata in western Libya. In an exact reversal of the situation just ten days earlier, government spokesman Mussa Ibrahim called the ceasefire proposal a "trick," telling reporters: "The rebels never offered peace. They don't offer peace, they are making impossible demands. We will not leave our cities. We are the government, not them." NATO warplanes meanwhile strafed positions held by Qaddafi-loyalist forces in the al-Khums and al-Rojban regions east and southwest of the capital Tripoli. (AFP, April 2)

Libya's opposition is ready for a ceasefire provided Moammer Qaddafi's forces end their assaults on rebel-held cities and repression of protesters, Transitional National Council leader Mustafa Abdul Jalil said April 1. "We agree on a ceasefire on the condition that our brothers in the western cities have freedom of expression and also that the forces that are besieging the cities withdraw," Jalil told reporters after meeting Abdul Ilah Khatib, the UN special envoy to Libya. "Our main goal is to achieve a last ceasefire that will hold." The appeal came as Qaddafi-loyal forces drove rebels back for a third day after sandstorms and clouds hindered NATO air strikes. There was no immediate response to the offer from Qaddafi officials.

Scottish prosecutors have requested an interview with defected Libyan foreign minister Moussa Koussa over the 1988 Lockerbie bombing, a move hailed by relatives of those killed in the air disaster. (Middle East Online, March 31) Koussa, former head of Libyan intelligence and until recently a member of Moammar Qaddafi's inner circle, arrived in the UK March 30 and said he was defecting. Popularly known as the "Envoy of Death," he was secretary of the Libyan People's Bureau in London—equivalent to Tripoli's ambassador—in the '80s. He was declared persona non grata by Britain after two Libyan opposition figures were murdered in London and he told the media that the policy of eliminating "stray dogs" would continue. Campaigners also hold him responsible in the 1984 slaying of Yvonne Fletcher, a London police officer who was apparently shot from inside the Libyan embassy while trying to control a crowd of anti-Qaddafi protesters (mostly Libyan ex-pats) who had gathered there. (The Guardian, March 31) Libyan rebels have arrested a man suspected in the Fletcher murder, one Omar Ahmed Sodani, who worked under Koussa at the embassy, and campaigners want him to face trial in UK. (The Guardian, March 25)

Moammar Qaddafi's forces pushed the Libyan rebels back to the east March 30, re-taking towns they had ceded just days ago. Rebel forces have now been pushed east of Brega and are headed for Ajdabiyah. Even amid Qaddafi's advance, his foreign minister Moussa Koussa defected to the UK. The first Allied air-strikes on Libya's east in two days were carried out, to check the Qaddafi forces' advance on Ajdabiyah. The Obama administration has sent teams of CIA operatives into Libya to establish ties with the rebels, the New York Times reported. Reuters, citing unnamed sources, said that Obama had signed a presidential "finding" authorizing covert aid to the rebels—which the administration would not confirm or deny. "No decision has been made about providing arms to the opposition or to any groups in Libya," said White House press secretary Jay Carney. "We're not ruling it out or ruling it in."

Libyan rebels are reported March 28 to be advancing on Moammar Qaddafi's heartland of Sirte after seizing the eastern coastal towns of Ras Lanuf, Brega, Uqayla and Bin Jawad. The rebels re-captured the ports of Ajdabiya and Brega on March 26. The rebels, on the verge of losing their eastern stronghold city of Benghazi before Allied air-strikes began on March 19, have turned the tide and pushed westwards towards Tripoli. (BBC News, Middle East Online, March 27)