LIBYA: Leader expects final victory in a week.
Libya’s de facto leader said Wednesday he expected to declare total victory over forces loyal to Moammar Gadhafi in less than a week, and the International Committee of the Red Cross said thousands of civilians were still trapped in the fugitive leader’s besieged home city. Despite heavy resistance, revolutionary forces are closing in on Gadhafi’s forces in Sirte.
UNITED STATES: Syria denies using American to spy on protesters in U.S.
The United States accused Syrian President Bashar Assad’s government of using an American citizen to spy on anti-Syrian activists in the U.S.
Mohamad Anas Haitham Soueid, 47, of Leesburg, a Syrian-born, naturalized U.S. citizen, is accused of sending audio and video recordings of American protesters to Syria’s intelligence agency and traveling to Syria to meet directly with Assad.
The Syrian Embassy issued a statement strongly denying that Soueid was an agent for them or that he met Assad.
EGYPT: Weapons smuggled from Libya flood Sinai’s black markets.
Large caches of weapons from Libya are making their way across the Egyptian border and flooding black markets in Egypt’s already unstable Sinai peninsula, according to current and former Egyptian military officials and arms traders in the Sinai.
Surface-to-air missiles, most of them shoulder-launched, have been intercepted by Egyptian security officials on the road to Sinai and in the smuggling tunnels that connect Egypt to Gaza since Moammar Gadhafi fell from power in Tripoli in August, a military official in Cairo said. Arms traders said the weapons available on the clandestine market in Sinai also include rockets and anti-aircraft guns.
The seizures raise fresh concerns about security along the sensitive area that borders the Gaza Strip and Israel.
Denver Post wire services
