The rebel military leader, Gen. Abdel Fattah Younes, on Saturday said in an interview with Al Arabiya, a satellite news channel, that his forces had already received weapons supplies from unnamed nations that support their uprising.posted by metaplectic at 8:28 AM on April 16, 2011
A spokesman for the rebels’ National Transitional Council, Mustafa Gheriani, confirmed General Younes’s statement but also refused to provide details.
Asked whether any arms shipments had arrived yet, a spokesman for the rebel military, Col. Ahmed Bani, smiled broadly, but then insisted, “I didn’t quite confirm it.”
On April 14, however, the emir of Qatar, Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, told CNN that his country would provide weapons to the rebels and that deliveries of antitank weapons may already have reached them. Qatar, along with Italy and France, has already recognized the rebels as the legitimate government of Libya.
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On Saturday, Mr. Gheriani said the rebels have opened “professional training centers.” Asked if that meant that foreign advisers or trainers were present, he declined to reply but winked broadly, twice. “We have a lot of people being trained, real professional training, that we don’t talk to the world about,” he said.
Such training, he added, is in addition to a Libyan-run training camp for rebel volunteers to get basic instruction before heading to the front line, which is now about 100 miles south of here, outside of Ajdabiya.
On Saturday that volunteer training camp was closed to journalists, although previously it had been open. A machinegun emplacement guarding the main entrance was abandoned, although the machine gun and live ammunition was left in place there, unattended.
Now, the contact said, they were turning to guerrilla actions. They have attacked checkpoints across the city, killing the pro-Gaddafi militia and stealing their guns. The shooting that crackles across the city after dark, which regime officials claim is celebratory gunfire, is the work of the underground rebels, he said. "They [the regime] are covering up ... Every night there are attacks. The boys [on the checkpoints] have got scared. They are only getting 40 dinars (£20) a night, and they are saying we don't want to do this dirty work any more." There have been fewer checkpoints since the attacks began, he claimed.Note this is in Tripoli.
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posted by humanfont at 2:46 PM on April 15, 2011