The following are the top stories in the Maltese and overseas press:
The Times reports how members of Libya’s rebel council have arrived in Tripoli. It also says that Malta had frozen €377 million in Libyan assets.
The Malta Independent reports that the rebels are continuing to chase Muammar Gaddafi.
In-Nazzjon says the Maltese government is working to release assets for use by the Libyan transitional council.
l-orizzont reports that a number of hotels are closing down. It also says that while a Central Bank survey shows improved consumer sentiment, further price increases are expected.
The overseas press
The New York Times quotes Western officials saying NATO was actively helping in the hunt for Col. Muammar Gaddafi and his sons. British Defence Secretary Liam Fox confirmed to Sky News that NATO was providing “intelligence and reconnaissance assets” to the insurgents “to help them track down Col. Gaddafi and other remnants of the regime”. However, Fox withheld comment on a report in The Daily Telegraph that the SAS – Britain’s elite ground forces – were involved in the chase. He also said there were “absolutely no plans” to commit British ground forces to Libya in the future.
The BBC reports that Gaddafi’s former right-hand, Abdel Salam Jalloud, who has been granted temporary asylum by Italy, said in Rome that he believed the rais could be hiding in any of a number of places and that he might have already fled to the desert. According to Jalloud, Gaddafi remains constantly on the move, together with a maximum of only four trusted aides.
As the rebels engaged in a ferocious fight with loyalists in a neighbourhood of apartment blocks near his former Tripoli fortress, Gaddafi urged Libyans in a brief audio broadcast on al Oruba TV to "fight and destroy" the rebels, whom he called “rats, crusaders and unbelievers”. The message was addressed to the people of Sirte, which is the rebels' next target. "Libya is for the Libyan people and not for the agents, not for imperialism, not for France, not for Sarkozy, not for Italy," said Col Gaddafi. "Tripoli is for you, not for those who rely on Nato". He urged the youth of Tripoli to fight "street by street, alleyway by alleyway, house by house" and said women too could fight "from inside their homes".
Gaddafi’s spokesman, Moussa Ibrahim, added to the defiant message in a telephone call to the Cairo Bureau of The Associated Press. He gave no clue to the whereabouts of Gaddafi or his family but said the Libyan leader’s morale was high, and that he was in command and capable of withstanding any rebel onslaught for “weeks, months and years”.
Al Arabiya TV said hundreds of wounded fighters and civilians streamed into Tripoli hospitals from the new clashes in Tripoli’s Abu Salim, a neighbourhood adjacent to Gaddafi’s former Bab al-Aziziya compound, which was overrun by rebels on Tuesday. Rumours swirled in the capital that insurgents fighting in Abu Salim had cornered Gaddafi or at least one member of his family. The claims were impossible to verify.
Reuters reported that the bullet-riddled bodies of more than 30 pro-Qaddafi fighters had been found at a military encampment in central Tripoli. At least two were bound with plastic handcuffs, suggesting that they had been executed. Five of the dead were found at a field hospital, one strapped to a gurney in an ambulance with an intravenous drip still in his arm.
Al Jazeera says the rebels claimed breakthroughs on other fronts on Wednesday, saying their fighters had started battling for Sabha, another of the colonel’s strongholds in the south, and in Zuwarah in the west. But even in parts of the capital thought to be in rebel hands, there were new outbursts of fighting. In one episode an intense gun battle broke out near the Corinthia hotel, which is housing many foreign journalists here. The hotel is also where the provisional post-Qaddafi government, based in Benghazi, was planning to relocate in coming days.
The Wall Street Journal reports the International Monetary Fund has said it would recognise the Transitional National Council as Libya's leaders when there was "a clear, broad-based, international recognition". The rebel cause also gained momentum after South Africa dropped opposition to an American effort at the UN Security Council to unblock frozen Libyan funds worth $1.5 billion for the rebels. And Turkey announced at a donors conference it is hosting in Istanbul that it already sent $200 million to the NTC. Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said Italy would begin unfreezing some $505 million in Libyan assets. The quest for an injection of cash coincides with reports of ever-increasing shortages of essential supplies in Libya.
Ansa says the four Italian journalists who were abducted and their driver killed outside of Tripoli, were released on Thursday. Two of the journalists worked for Corriere della Sera, while the others were reporters for La Stampa and Avvenire newspapers.
Al Mostaqbal says a ship that can carry 200 people has left Tripoli carrying foreign nationals, including Egyptians, Filipinos, Canadians, Algerians, Moroccans and an Italian, for the return voyage to Benghazi, where they were to receive assistance to travel home. A second boat chartered by the Geneva-based organization was planning to dock this weekend in Tripoli, where many more migrants have been urgently waiting to leave.
Balkan Times reports Eastern Europe has been hit by a near-record heatwave which has seen wildfires raging and people fainting in the streets. Authorities in Serbia, Montenegro, Croatia, Macedonia, Bosnia and Albania issued warnings today for people to stay indoors and drink water. In Montenegro, temperatures in the last few days reached more than 40oC. In the central Bosnian city of Mostar, temperatures soared to 45oC as children jumped on melting asphalt, leaving their footprints in the streets. Meteorologists say temperatures in the Balkans are some 10 degrees higher than usual.
Austrian police say they are investigating allegations a man locked up his two mentally-disabled daughters and sexually abused them for 41 years. Police said that the 80-year-old repeatedly raped the women between 1970 and May 2011. The alleged victims are now 53 and 45 years old. The Oberoesterreichischen Nachrichten newspaper reported that the women escaped when the father was unable to get up after the older daughter pushed him over when he tried to rape her. State broadcaster ORF said the allegations were only recently revealed because the two alleged victims did not tell anyone about them for weeks after their escape. It said the suspect is now in a home for the elderly because there is no danger of him fleeing.