• Two more alleged mass graves found in Libya
• Key opposition figure reported killed in Syria - report
• More activists jailed in Bahrain
There is still heavy fighting in the Gaddafi stronghold of Sirte, Peter Beaumont reports from the city.
About 500m from where I am there is a tank which at one stage was firing a round every minute into the city. The hospital is about 3km [away] and you can see smoke coming from the area ... which has got quite a number of pro-Gaddafi fighters.
It is still quite difficult to move around, there's still quite a lot of snipers. Even where I am, which is reported to be held, it is still quite heavily contested. It [Sirte] is far from fallen but it is under a lot of pressure. All the fighters I speak to on the new government side say it will fall within the next couple of days. People have been saying that apparently for the last two weeks.
On the plight of residents, Peter said:
A lot of civilians have left the city, those that can have driven out. The civilians that are still stuck in the city are largely ones who don't have petrol for their cars. The commanders, I spoke to this morning, said we want civilians to leave but eventually we are going to have take the city properly. There is a growing sense of inevitability that there will be an intensive push into the city at some stage soon.
Here's a summary of the main developments today:
Libya
• Two mass graves, which could contain as many as 1,000 bodies, have been found in Tripoli according to forces loyal to the interim government. They follow the reported discovery of two other mass graves in the capital last week,.
• The International Committee for the Red Cross has been providing humanitarian assistance to civilians in the besieged city of Sirte. They have been delivering medical and other supplies and have evacuated some injured civilians. Conditions have been deteriorating in the city as the siege has gone on.
Syria
• Sheikh Nawaf al-Bashir, the head of the large Baqara tribe in Syria's eastern governate of Deir Ezzour and a prominent opponent of President Assad, has been killed after being tortured, al-Arabiya reports citing Syria's council of tribes. But a Syrian blogger says the Baqara tribe is denying the news. Bashir was arrested in late July, hours after telling Reuters he was trying to stop armed resistance in the face of a military assault.
• The mother of Zainab al-Hosni, the 18-year-old who was reported to have have been beheaded and mutilated by state security agents, only to apparently appear on Syrian state TV on Tuesday, said she still thinks her daughter is dead - but cannot be sure.
Bahrain
• Bahrain's military court has imposed prison terms on 33 more activists. The sentences range from one year to 15 years. They take the number of people jailed this week alone in relation to anti-government protests to more than 110. The news came after Bahrain bowed to international pressure in ordering a retrial of the 20 medical staff sentenced last week to jail terms ranging from five to 15 years.
Syrian blogger BSyria tweets that the Baqara tribe has denied the report that its leader Sheikh Nawaf al-Bashir has been killed (see 11.20am).
Accompanied by Syrian government minders, the BBC's Lyse Doucet was allowed access to the Damascus suburb of Douma. Here's an extract from her article:
As crowds grew around us, so did the presence of men in shell suits shadowing us, talking on telephones, listening in. But unlike other neighbourhoods we had visited in Damascus, this did not stop people from speaking their mind.
"My 18-year-old son has been detained," said one man who made his way through the crowd to talk to us. "We were leaving the mosque, and there was a demonstration outside," he explained, hiding neither his face nor his anger.
"We weren't at the protest, but they started shooting toward us. We were separated, and I saw my son being dragged away."
I asked him why he had decided to tell us his story. "I'm afraid now, " he admitted. "But I've told you my story. What will happen, will happen."
I asked one student about the situation. "It's good," he replied. Another young man interrupted him: "It's very bad, the government is shooting and killing people."
We moved down the street toward the main mosque. Young men immediately surround us. Within minutes, they're chanting: "Freedom! Freedom!" And: "Down with the regime!"
Waving their mobile phones in the air, they shout: "The camera is our weapon."No sooner does this impromptu protest start than we see military buses moving down the street towards the crowds. We are told we have to leave.
The mother of Zainab al-Hosni, the 18-year-old who was reported to have have been beheaded and mutilated by state security agents, only to apparently appear on Syrian state TV on Tuesday, said she still thinks her daughter is dead - but cannot be sure.
Syria's government sought to score a propaganda coup with the mysterious brief interview, describing it as intended to discredit foreign "media fabrications".
Hosni's family intially confirmed that it was her in the film, but they could not say whether she was alive or had in fact been killed after the interview. However, in an interview with al-Arabiya, her mother, who was unnamed, said:
I doubt that the girl on TV is my daughter, and if she was, then who was the girl that the morgue people handed to me … I wish that my daughter was still alive.
Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, who drew attention to Hosni's reported death last month, have issued a joint statement calling for immediate access to Syria to be able to review the case and "other disturbing cases reported to them". They also said:
It now appears that Zaynab's family misidentified the body that was presented to them due to the extensive damage to the body.
Sheikh Nawaf al-Bashir, the head of the large Baqara tribe in Syria's eastern governate of Deir Ezzour and a prominent opponent of President Assad, has been killed after being tortured, Syria's council of tribes has said, al-Arabiya reports.
Bashir was arrested in late July. Hours before his arrest he told Reuters he was striving to stop armed resistance to a military assault on the provincial capital of Deir Ezzour and to convince inhabitants to stick to peaceful methods, despite killings by security forces.
After his arrest Deir Ezzour was subjected to a 15-day military assault in August. Bashir's death could increase support for an armed uprising.
Bahrain may have bowed to international pressure in ordering a retrial of the 20 medical staff sentenced last week to jail terms ranging from five to 15 years (see 8.20am) but that hasn't stopped it continuing to imprison activists opposed to the royal family.
Defence lawyer Mohsen al-Alawi told AP that 33 more activists have been sentenced to prison terms - ranging from one to 15 years - taking the number of people jailed this week alone in relation to anti-government protests to more than 110.
The sentences were imposed by a military court as with others this week, although authorities have promised to shift the remaining cases to civilian courts.
Al-Jazeera's Zeina Khodr tweets that the International Committee of the Red Cross is providing humanitarian assistance to people in Sirte, in Libya.
#Libya, #ICRC delivering medical and other supplies in the besieged city of #Sirte, #Libya. #Gaddafi
#Libya, #ICRC spokesperson says they will try to evacuate injured civilians from #Sirte, #Libya, #Gaddafi
Congress and human rights groups are gearing up to fight the Obama administration's plan to sell $53 million worth of weapons to Bahrain, Josh Rogin writes on Foreign Policy:
Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Representative Jim McGovern (D-MA) are circulating a resolution that would stop the sale from going through.
"Providing arms to a government that is actively committing human rights violations against peaceful protestors is at odds with United States foreign policy goals," Wyden told The Cable. "We should be promoting democracy and human rights in the region and not rewarding a regime that is jailing and in some cases killing those who choose to peacefully protest their government and anyone who supports them. This resolution will prevent the U.S. from providing the Kingdom of Bahrain with weaponry until they show a real commitment to respecting human rights."
"The Humvees are particularly worrisome for a regime that is quashing protests," said one Senate aide who works on the issue. "But the overall principle of selling arms to this regime as they use live ammunition to kill protesters is just awful and we're going to do what we can to try to stop it."
Other senior senators are just becoming aware of the issue, but their initial reactions are a mixture of concern and criticism of the Bahrain government.
"I'm cautious about empowering this regime now in Bahrain. The internal conflict in Bahrain needs to be settled," Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) told The Cable. "I'm not so sure I would go down that road right now [in terms of arms sales]."
The article refers to an open letter from Human Rights First calling on Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman John Kerry to stop the sales. It has been signed by more than 5,000 people.
The Project for Middle East Democracy and NGOs including Human Rights Watch and Physicians for Human Rights have also drafted a letter to Congress urging it "to take immediate action to block a proposed arms sale to Bahrain until it ends abuses against peaceful protesters and takes meaningful steps toward political reform and accountability for recent and ongoing serious human rights violation."
Libyan revolutionary forces have been looting and burning homes in Abdu Hadi, in Sirte, and making off with gold, furniture and even cars, AP reports:
Most of those looting homes are unorganised, volunteer bands of gunmen from the city of Misrata, to the west, which was brutalised in a bloody siege by Gaddafi's forces during the nearly 7-month uprising against his rule. Trying to rein them in are revolutionaries from eastern Libya, which shook off Gaddafi's rule early and have since had time to organise their forces.
Streets were littered with bullet casings, and black smoke billowed from four homes that had been set ablaze by fighters. Many of the homes laid out in rows in the residential complexes had been broken into, with wooden doors busted, stoves and refrigerators overturned, baby clothes and homework strewn all over the floors.
Nato hit eight targets in Libya on Wednesday, all in Bani Walid, according to its latest operational media update (pdf link).
They were a military installation, a military staging location and six command and control nodes.
Nato Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen has just finished his opening address at the meeting of Nato defence ministers, where they are expected to debate when to end the air war in Libya. It was very brief and he made no reference to Libya, only to Afghanistan.
But the French defence minister Gerard Longue said the bombing campaign will continue unitil all pockets of resistance are suppressed and the new government calls for them to end, AP reports.
Two more mass graves have been found in the Libyan capital, which could contain as many as 1,000 bodies, according to forces allied to the interim government:
Naji al-Issawi, a commander in a unit of Tripoli's military council, showed reporters two corpses exhumed from a cemetery which he said contained between 200 and 300 corpses.
Issawi said officials planned to dig up more of the site in the Gargarish district and start identifying the remains.
An official from the cemetery said the corpses had been collected from streets and hospitals following the rebel assault on the Libyan capital in late August.
One of the corpses displayed on Wednesday was largely decomposed and appeared to be clad in military fatigues and boots.
Issawi said a separate burial site elsewhere in the capital had been discovered and could contain as many as 700 bodies.
Two alleged mass graves were found in Tripoli last week, although some questioned whether they contained human remains, as opposed to human remains. One was found near Tripoli's Abu Salim prison, site of a massacre by the Gaddafi regime in 1996 and the other near the Rixos Hotel, where journalists were trapped by Gaddafi forces during the fall of Tripoli.
Protesters in the Syrian city of Homs burned Russian and Chinese flags, together with photographs of Bashar al-Assad, in response to the countries exercising their veto at the UN security council to block a resolution condemning the Syrian president.
Video was also posted to YouTube showing protesters burning the Russian flag in Damascus.
Nato secretary general Anders Fogh Rasmussen is due to make the opening statement at the meeting of Nato defence ministers shortly. They will discuss when to end the air war in Libya. You can watch the livestream here.
Welcome to Middle East Live. Nato defence ministers are to debate today when to declare an end to the air war in Libya.
Libya
• The meeting of Nato defence ministers comes amid concerns over the mounting cost of the air campaign and the vagueness of the alliance's war aims, the Guardian's diplomatic editor, Julian Borger, writes:
Nato aircraft have not carried out any strikes since the weekend. However, sorties by RAF Tornado and Typhoon jets, even without any bombs dropped or missiles fired, still cost £35,000 and £45,000 respectively.By some estimates the war could soon cost Britain more than £1bn, with France and the US facing similar bills, and there is anxiety in all three countries that the campaign should drag on indefinitely.
Meanwhile, Nato members who originally opposed the intervention, including Germany and some eastern European states, argue that its mission is no longer clear.
Nato officials admit it will be hard to make a judgment on when the civilian population is no longer under threat.
• A grave containing the bodies of five men wearing civilian clothes, has been discovered outside the Libyan coastal city of Misrata. They had clearly been executed and their bodies dumped, writes Peter Beaumont. The find comes after the discovery of two alleged mass graves in Tripoli last week. One was found near Tripoli's Abu Salim prison, site of a massacre by the Gaddafi regime in 1996 and the other near the Rixos Hotel, where journalists were trapped by Gaddafi forces during the fall of Tripoli.
Syria
• Dissidents in Syria have indicated that an armed insurrection within the country will gather momentum after the failure to pass a UN resolution against Bashar al-Assad's regime. Activists from Homs and Hama, where mostly peaceful protests over the past six months have lately become more aggressive and armed, say the failure of the US effort to threaten sanctions against Syria has convinced some that diplomacy cannot protect them. An activist from Homs said:
There's no way out of this except to fight. For the people of Homs the international community are not with us and we know that for sure. Russia and China will continue to protect Assad and as long as that happens, he will hunt us down.
• The Local Co-ordination Committees, which records protests, said 13 people were killed on Wednesday, three in Hama, four in Homs, three in Idlib and one each in Hasakah, Swaida and Daeel.
Bahrain
• Twenty medical staff sentenced last week to jail terms ranging from five to 15 years for treating injured anti-government protesters will be retried after an international outcry at the harsh sentencing. The doctors and nurses will be free pending the new trial, which will be in a civilian court as opposed to the military court where the original hearing was conducted.
Saudi Arabia
• Saudi security forces have pulled out of parts of the oil-rich Eastern province to avoid further confrontation with Shia protesters, human rights activists told the Independent. But they warned that any small incident might provoke fresh clashes. A Shia writer and community leader in Qatif, near the centre of the violence, rubbished the Saudi government's insinuation that Iran was behind the unrest. Tawfiq al-Saif told the FT: "Saying there was a foreign power behind this is nonsense. There is a tension [here] for a long time. So to use force will actually add more fuel to the fire".