BBC news 2011-02-24 加文本

BBC news 2011-02-24

BBC News with David Austin

The Libyan leader Colonel Gaddafi is battling to keep control of western Libya including the capital Tripoli. Residents have said they are too frightened to venture out in case Colonel Gaddafi's forces shoot them on sight. The International Federation for Human Rights says at least 700 people have died in Libya since the start of the uprising. In the east, the opposition has consolidated its hold and controls the main city Benghazi. A warplane was reported to have crashed near the city after the crew bailed out. They said they'd been ordered to bomb Benghazi but refused. Details have also emerged of how unarmed Libyans took on and defeated special forces at an eastern airbase. Jon Leyne has visited the scene and told us what happened.

After the protests started and the government lost control of a lot of area, they tried to bring in reinforcements, special forces, elite forces and also what are described as these foreign mercenaries, mostly from other parts of Africa. Now when local people heard about that, they called on people around the airbase to try and prevent this because people were literally being flown into the airbase then bussed down to these towns to attack the protesters. And local people, local young people, initially completely unarmed except sticks and stones, went and surrounded that airbase and took on those special forces, and then eventually got some kind of weapons from army bases and looted army bases, and they took on those special forces and they have defeated them.

The American Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has said that those responsible for the violence against civilians in Libya must be held to account. Speaking in Washington, she said the United States would look at all possible options to end the violence.

"We are joining with the rest of the world in sending a clear message to the Libyan government that violence is unacceptable and that the Libyan government will be held accountable. Now the way that we will proceed in the Security Council and in the Human Rights Council is to come up with the best approaches that we think will help the people of Libya."

Earlier, Washington said it was considering an assets freeze on Libya. In Brussels, European Union ambassadors said the EU was ready to impose further measures against Libya if necessary. And the Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini has warned that up to 300,000 Libyans could try to enter Europe.

A massive evacuation operation is in full swing as countries around the world try to rescue tens of thousands of their nationals caught up in the chaos engulfing Libya. The United States, China and many European countries have sent in planes, ships and ferries to help their citizens escape the increasingly unstable situation. Turkey has already evacuated 5,000 of its citizens.

The price of oil has jumped sharply in reaction to the continuing crisis in Libya. In New York, it passed $100 a barrel for the first time since 2008. Brent crude reached $110 a barrel.

This is the World News from the BBC in London.

A former Serbian police chief has been jailed for 27 years for his role in the murder of more than 700 ethnic Albanians in Serbia's province of Kosovo in 1999. Vlastimir Djordjevic was convicted by the international tribunal in The Hague on four counts of crimes against humanity. Mark Lowen reports.

The court found that Mr Djordjevic as Serbian deputy interior minister and chief of the public security department during the war played a crucial role in what's called a joint criminal enterprise. That is a common plan to kill over 700 ethnic Albanians from Kosovo and drive hundreds of thousands from their homes in order, as the court put it, to alter the ethnic balance in Kosovo. The judge concluded that police officers under the defendants' control committed the crimes, and that Mr Djordjevic himself tried to conceal the bodies of those killed by ordering their transfer to sites in Serbia, where they were buried in mass graves.

A senior United Nations official for Afghanistan says the security situation there is worse now than at any time since the overthrow of the Taliban 10 years ago. The UN humanitarian coordinator for Afghanistan Robert Watkins said that aid agencies now had regular access to just 30% of the country, and the Nato troops surge appeared not to have improved things.

"While Nato is claiming that it has turned the corner that it has taken the offensive and that the insurgency is now on the defensive, we still see these very difficult security problems, and there have been also an uNPRecedented number of attacks against humanitarian workers."

The New Zealand Prime Minister John Key has said it's unlikely that many more survivors will be found in the city of Christchurch, hit by an earthquake on Tuesday. Mr Key said he hadn't given up hope of finding people but that the authorities had to be realistic. At least 70 people have been killed, but up to 300 others are missing.

That's the BBC News.