Fugitive Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi is ready to begin talks to transfer power, his spokesman, Moussa Ibrahim, has said. The rebels have rejected all negotiations until Gadhafi surrenders.
Ibrahim said Gadhafi was still in Libya did not specify where. Gadhafi announced his son, Saadi, would lead the negotiations form a transitional government.
“I will try to save my city Tripoli and 2 millions of people living there… otherwise Tripoli will be lost forever like Somalia,” he wrote. Without a cease-fire, Saadi Gaddafi added, “Soon it will be a sea of blood.”
This, as horrors of the war continue to be discovered. More than 50 charred bodies have been found in a burnt-out warehouse in the south of the capital, said to be civilians who had been executed on Tuesday by members of a brigade commanded by Col Gaddafi’s son, Khamis. Human Rights Watch says it has evidence that pro-Gaddafi forces executed at least 17 prisoners and dozens of civilians in the days before Tripoli fell to the rebels.
On Friday, more than 200 decomposing bodies were found at an abandoned hospital in the capital’s Abu Salim district. Doctors and nurses fled because of the fighting and many injured patients were left to die.
Extrajudicial executions and other comparable crimes continue to be uncovered and committed by rebel groups as well. Meanwhile, rebel commanders say negotiations are being held with Sirte’s elders to try and force a peaceful surrender of the town, but so far those talks have gone nowhere.