LIBYA: NATO planes bomb Tripoli.
Rebels battled Moammar Gadhafi’s forces in eastern Libya, and NATO warplanes struck Tripoli early today in the heaviest bombing of the Libyan capital in weeks.
Overnight, NATO warplanes struck a building said to be used by a military intelligence agency. Another targeted a government building that officials said was sometimes used by parliament members. Two other strikes appeared to hit the compound housing members of Gadhafi’s family.
Heavy fighting was reported south of Ajdabiya, a rebel-held town about 90 miles south of Benghazi, the rebel headquarters in the east.
Meanwhile, the first supply ship in five days reached Misrata. The vessel was chartered by the International Committee of the Red Cross.
The U.N. refugee agency said an overcrowded ship carrying up to 600 people trying to flee Libya sank just outside the port of Tripoli on Friday. The fate of its passengers was not known.
TUNISIA: Woman who said soldiers raped her flees.
A Libyan woman who became a symbol of her country’s repression after security forces tried to silence her allegations of rape at the hands of Gadhafi militiamen said Monday that she has escaped to neighboring Tunisia with the help of a defecting soldier.
The woman, Eman al- Obeidy, told CNN on Monday that a soldier and his family had driven her in a military car to a rebel-held border crossing Thursday. She hid her face behind a traditional head covering, she said, and crossed the border as a refugee. She said she continued to fear pursuit by agents of Moammar Gadhafi and hoped to find protection from a Western government.
EGYPT: Demonstration organizer will pen book.
Wael Ghonim, the former Google executive and Egyptian revolutionary who coined the term “Revolution 2.0,” now has a deal to write a book with that name.
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt has bought the rights to publish Ghonim’s book, which will tell “the inside story of the Egyptian revolution and the lessons of the Arab Spring,” the New York publisher said in a statement.
The 30-year-old former Google executive was one of the people who mobilized protesters through technology and social media.
The book is set to be released Jan. 25.
YEMEN: Protesters fired on; 4 killed.
Security forces and government supporters opened fire on protesters Monday in the city of Taiz, witnesses said, while a doctor confirmed that four people were killed and scores injured after almost a month of stalled negotiations over how and when President Ali Abdullah Saleh would leave office.
Protesters said that a large march was headed toward the municipal education offices in the center of the city when it came under fire. A doctor at a field hospital said that 88 others were wounded by gunshots, 13 remaining in critical condition.
Denver Post wire services
