Libya

I suppose that our team too remains trapped here until The Red Star can safely dock and then leave for Benghazi in the east.

Channel 4 News Chief Correspondent Alex Thomson blogs on why the rebel forces in Misrata were being uncharacteristically reluctant to take them to the site of a recent explosion.

Life in besieged Misrata throws up many questions, blogs Alex Thomson. Why, for example, were thousands of migrant workers allowed to gather close to the port, where they inevitably became a target?

The director of the only hospital still functioning in Misrata says “the world looks on. Like it’s a movie. Like it’s not real. But it is real. It’s been 70 days now.”

Alex Thomson blogs from four miles off the coast of Misrata, on board a ship bringing relief supplies to the besieged city.

“Getting past the phalanx of armed guards at the gates of the Rixos sans government minder is hard, but we’d obtained a contact who claimed to be a rebel fighter in the heart of the capital and we were determined to meet him. If he was prepared to take the risk, so were we…”

Jalal al-Treike thinks he’s my friend. He really does. Every day now he greets me with a “Hello Jonny,” a big grin and a hearty slap on the back. He looks out for me and is never far away. But Jalal al-Treike, who even the other government minders just call “Scarface” – thanks to a big scar running obliquely down his forehead – is, unfortunately, a malevolent and menacing presence and has unusual ways of showing his friendship.

Photographer and filmmaker Tim Hetherington has died in Misrata, Libya. Channel 4 News Foreign Correspondent Jonathan Miller pays tribute to him.

As the British Government announces it’s sending British military advisors to Afghanistan, Channel 4 News Chief Correspondent Alex Thomson asks whether the EU could end up fighting on foreign soil for the first time?

Aid organisations are warning of a humanitarian disaster in Misrata, the last major rebel enclave in western Libya, where hundreds of civilians are said to have died in a “medieval” six-week siege.

As Jonathan Rugman leaves Libya, he remains concerned about the civilians left behind in what he fears will be a long drawn-out conflict.

This bright spring morning in Tripoli I set myself the challenge of buying a watch with Colonel Gaddafi’s face on it. My departing producer had acquired several as souvenirs for friends back home. A Gaddafi watch might make a novelty Christmas present, perhaps. It might even become a collectors’ item, if Libya’s rebels fulfil their…

Libya’s Deputy Foreign Minister Khalid Kaim tells Jonathan Rugman the continued presence of Colonel Gaddafi should not pose a problem as far as reconciling the east and west of the country is concerned.