SIRTE, Libya: Transitional Libyan government forces swept into Sirte on Sunday in one of the biggest assaults yet on Muammar Gaddafi’s hometown, but had to seek cover when they drew fire from his die-hard loyalists.

Fighters with the National Transitional Council (NTC) shouted ”Allahu Akbar!” or ”God is greatest!” as their force of about 100 pick-up trucks mounted with heavy weapons pushed into a residential district on the southern side of Sirte.

They were forced to scramble for refuge under heavy fire from pro-Gaddafi fighters holed up in an apartment complex, a Reuters reporter on the scene reported. Two NTC fighters were killed and three wounded in the exchanges.

”There is a very vicious battle now in Sirte,” NTC chairman Mustafa Abdel Jalil told reporters in the capital Tripoli, where he was meeting defence ministers from Britain and Italy.

”On Sunday our fighters are dealing with the snipers that are taking positions and hiding in the city of Sirte.”

Taking Sirte would bring Libya’s new rulers closer to their goal of establishing control of the entire country almost two months after they seized the capital Tripoli, but they are also under pressure to spare the civilians trapped inside.

The NTC forces have thrust Gaddafi loyalists back from defensive positions well outside Sirte, and are now contesting control of the centre of the Mediterranean coastal city in often-chaotic, street-by-street battles.

A prolonged struggle to capture the few remaining bastions of pro-Gaddafi loyalists has sidetracked NTC efforts to set up effective government over the sprawling North African country and rebuild oil production vital to its economy.

Thousands of civilians have fled Sirte as fighting has intensified, describing increasingly desperate conditions for those still inside the seafront city.

There is no electricity while drinking water and food are running out, and people have spoken of the stench of rotting corpses at the city’s hospital.

More residents were leaving Sirte on Sunday. ”We could not understand who was firing,” said Milad Abdul Rahim, who was heading out of Sirte. ”It is just random.”

Hassan Massoud drove out of the city in a pick-up truck with his family in the cab and luggage teetering on the back. He said he had decided to leave after his neighbour’s house was hit.

”It was single-storey. It collapsed on them. It killed a man and a girl,” he said.

Along with the interior desert town of Bani Walid, Sirte is one of the last redoubts of Gaddafi loyalists in the country he ruled alone for 42 years.

It holds symbolic importance because Gaddafi turned it from a fishing village into a second capital. He built opulent villas, hotels and conference halls to house the international summits he liked to stage there.

NTC officials say they believed Gaddafi’s son Mo’tassim, who used to be the national security adviser, was hiding somewhere in Sirte. ”(The loyalists) are defending fiercely,” said Abdullah Aaly, an NTC field commander. ”It looks like they are protecting someone important.”

But taking Sirte carries risks for Libya’s new rulers. A drawn-out battle with many civilian casualties will breed hostility that will make it very difficult for the NTC to unite the country once the fighting is over.

After their push into the south of Sirte, some of the NTC pick-ups took up position on a raised piece of ground about 1.5 km (1 mile) from the marble-clad Ouagadougou conference hall, where Gaddafi once hosted Arab and African heads of state.

From the hill, they fired salvoes of rockets at buildings down below, sending smoke curling into the sky. Gaddafi loyalists responded with mortars and bullets which whistled past the parked pick-up trucks.

For the anti-Gaddafi fighters down in Sirte’s neat grid of streets, their offensive has turned into a deadly game of cat-and-mouse with snipers.

They said pro-Gaddafi forces had stationed snipers in the Ouagadougou hall, the university and hospital.

More snipers were in residential buildings in the northeastern corner of Sirte. Faraj Leshersh, an NTC fighter in that sector, said the snipers were expert at operating unseen.

He said they used trenches between buildings which allowed them to move location without showing themselves. At other times, he said, they burned tyres so the smoke would conceal their movements.

A sandstorm on Saturday gave them cover to regain a little of the ground in the northeast of the city that they had earlier lost to the NTC forces.

”They (pro-Gaddafi forces) took advantage of the dust and they advanced a little. There is 500 metres (yards) between us and them,” Leshersh said from a luxury hotel now being used as a base to attack the city. (UNI)

Colombo: At least four people, including an advisor to President Mahinda Rajapaksa, were killed on Sunday in a shootout during Sri Lanka’s violence-marred local government elections, forcing the authorities to impose curfew just outside the capital.

Bharatha Lakshman Premachandra, an aide of Rajapaksa and a former ruling party lawmaker, was killed in a shootout following clashes between two factions of the ruling United People’s Freedom Alliance in Kotikawatta, a north Colombo suburb.

Three others, including a bodyguard of Premachandra, was also killed in the shootout.

Among the ten injured are Duminda Silva, a member of parliament who suffered serious head injuries and was admitted to the intensive care unit in a critical condition. Kotikawatta local council was one of the 23 councils which went to polls on Sunday in the last phase of the local government election began in March.

A curfew has been imposed in the area following the shoot out, police spokesman Maxi Proctor said. Election monitors said the polling was between 55 to 60 per cent.

Over 50 incidents of election malpractise, including intimidation of voters and illegal propaganda work, were reported, the monitors said. Over 1.5 millions voters were eligible to vote to elect 420 members for a four-year term. The results are expected to be announce tomorrow. The elections are seen as a mid-term test for Rajapaksa, who has tightened his grip on power by following his landslide victory in the presidential and polls last year. (PTI)

Sanaa: Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh, faced with more than eight months of street protests demanding his ouster, said on Sunday he is ready to step down but his opponents said the apparent offer was a sham.

“I don’t want power and I will give it up in the coming days,” Yemen’s veteran strongman said in a televised speech during which he launched a tirade against his opponents to whom he refused to hand over. Saleh, 69, said it was “impossible to let them (the opposition) destroy the country,” whereas there were “sincere men, whether they be military or civilian” who were capable of governing Yemen.

The president, in power for 33 years, has refused to quit under the terms of a transition plan drawn up by Yemen’s oil-rich Arab neighbours in the Gulf.

“For the past nine months the Yemeni people have resisted this great plot in a way no other Arab country has resisted, not Tunisia or Egypt or Libya,” Saleh said of the protests which have wracked Yemen since January.

“We will meet again in the upcoming days to explain to the people the truth and developments in all transparency,” he said. Yemen’s new Nobel Peace Prize laureate, leading women’s activist Tawakkul Karman, said Saleh’s latest offer could not be trusted and protests would continue. (AFP)

CAIRO: Egypt’s military, in charge since an 18-day popular revolt ousted President Hosni Mubarak on February 11, says it wants to hand power to civilians as soon as possible and has set a timeline for a parliamentary election to start the process.

But protesters have become increasingly frustrated with the army, which provided Egypt’s rulers for six decades, as the transition process has dragged out. No date has yet been set for presidential voting.

Many Egyptians believe the army wants to keep a hand on the levers of power to protect its business interests, privileges and US military aid that has flowed in since Egypt made peace with Israel in 1979.

Here are some of the main political risks ahead:

The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, which took control when Mubarak was driven out, has seemed eager to get out of day-to-day government.

But it has fuelled suspicions about its willingness to relinquish all the reins of power by failing to set a clear timeline to complete the transfer.

Parliamentary elections start on November 28 but the staggered vote means polling to the lower and upper houses will not be completed until March. Parliament will then choose an assembly to draw up the new constitution, which under the current plans must be in place before a presidential vote is held.

That means there may not be a presidential election until late 2012 or early 2013, leaving the army with presidential powers such as forming governments until then. A group of presidential hopefuls want an earlier vote.

The army was the only pillar of the ruling establishment to survive intact after Mubarak’s party collapsed. It controls a big chunk of the economy, between 10 and 30 per cent according to some analysts. It may seek a role as guardian of national security, providing a broad remit to intervene.

That could lead to tension with protesters and, in the longer term, civilian governments as it has in Turkey, whose military has ousted four governments since 1960 although the power of Turkish generals has now been curbed.

Demonstrators have turned up the heat on the army. A common chant has been ”The people want to topple the Field Marshal,” a reference to the head of the army council, Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, who was Mubarak’s defence minister for two decades. As it seeks to deflect criticism from the street, the army has expanded its anti-corruption drive and reshuffled the cabinet three times, adding to political uncertainty.

One reason the army may be keen to get out of day-to-day government is to avoid taking the blame for the tough decisions needed to revive confidence in the battered economy. Those policies will deflate the wild expectations of many about a rapid improvement in living standards with Mubarak’s downfall.

The budget deficit has ballooned since tourists packed up and foreign investors fled, shaking two pillars of the economy.

The previous finance minister negotiated a 3.2 billion dollar loan package with the International Monetary Fund, but after agreeing a deal with few strings attached, Egypt turned it down in part because the army said it did not want to raise debt.

The government revised its budget to rein in the forecast deficit to 8.6 per cent of gross domestic product from 11 per cent, but economists say that may be optimistic.

Egypt has depended heavily on local banks to meet funding needs. Banks are liquid but pressures are showing in higher yields demanded at treasury bill auctions, reaching levels last seen in the global financial crisis of 2008. Traders say Egypt needs external funds to avoid a further rise. (UNI)

Putin’s birthday triggers Twitter flash mob

Moscow: Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who celebrated his 59th birthday Friday, caused a Twitter flash mob with a hashtag devoted to his birthday topping the world’s trends.

The hashtag #C?????????????????, which can be translated as “thank Putin for that,” appeared early Friday when the pro-Kremlin United Russia party’s member, Vladimir Burmatov, decided to congratulate the premier with the ironic tweet: “The summer hasn’t left Moscow yet, thank Putin for that.”

“I wanted to make some fun on premier’s birthday,” Burmatov said in an interview with BBC Russian service. “I expected to play this game with my 30-something thousand readers. And it turned to attract broad masses of people.”

“Have uncensored Internet? Thank Putin for that,” Burmatov posted later, causing a wave of similar tweets.

Since almost 50 percent of Russian-speaking Twitterites are Muscovites in their late 20s and early 30s that are known for their staunch criticism of Putin, the birthday hashtag inspired them to stage a poetic flash mob that quickly turned into the marathon of sarcastic verses.

“Russia leaves the souls of poets dead, thank Putin for that,” wrote one of the Twitter users, @IvanBerezov.

“Have no money for the flat, thank Putin for that,” posted @KatiKleine.

“Lack of free food drives us mad, thank Putin for that,” one of the journalists in a Russian news agency wrote after the company announced a closure of a so-called “bonus-bar” where the workers could have a free daily snack.

Russian celebrities joined the game with several sharp tweets, reflecting the recent political events in the country.

“Brezhnev has returned from the dead, thank Putin for that,” wrote @galerist, Russian art dealer Marat Gelman, referring to the widely spread claim that Putin’s return to power would cause a long-lasting stagnation, similar to the one during Leonid Brezhnev’s 18-year tenure.

It is not the first time when Putin received a birthday present in such a creative manner. Last year the group of young girls, students of journalism in Moscow State University (MGU), made the world’s headlines when they published a birthday calendar for Putin, in which they posed in lingerie.

This year the MGU students of journalism issued a colouring book, called “Vova and Dima” (the contracted versions of ruling duo’s first names) that featured two little boys, resembling Putin and Medvedev.

Russian government has yet to comment on the Twitter “present” for Putin.

On Tuesday Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that his boss has no account in social networks and uses Internet accidentally. (IANS)

 Pak official takes latecomers to task

Islamabad: A senior Pakistani official has warned of strict action against latecomers after just two officials reported for work on time in Karachi city.

Roshan Ali Shaikh, district coordination officer Karachi, decided to take strict action against officials for not reaching office on time, reported Daily Times.

Barring two officials, no other official arrived at office by 10 a.m. Saturday.

The media report said that strict action will be taken against the officers after show cause notice is issued. (IANS)

 Man kills son, daughter

Islamabad: A man fatally stabbed his son and daughter following an argument with his wife in Pakistan’s Punjab province.

Farooq killed Waheed, 6, and Saba, 3, when his wife stepped out of their home, reported Dawn.Farooq has been arrested. The couple had an argument over cooking of meal. (IANS)