The former head of Muammar Gaddafi's external security organisation, Bouzaid Dorba, stands trial in Tripoli

Attack on buildings in Benghazi is first on US diplomatic target since fall of Muammar Gaddafi

A bomb exploded outside the gates of the US consulate in Libya's second city, Benghazi, on Tuesday night, in the first attack on an American diplomatic target in the country since the fall of Muammar Gaddafi.

There were no casualties reported and the explosion caused damage to the surrounding wall but a US embassy spokesman in Tripoli said they were still waiting for a full damage assessment.

He said the culprits were unknown but that security had been tightened around US diplomatic missions in both Benghazi and the capital, Tripoli.

"The United States deplores the attack on the mission in Benghazi," said the spokesman. "We want a full investigation."

Suspicion will fall on jihadist militias operating in the eastern Libyan city, who came to prominence in April, when they were filmed using hammers to smash tombstones and monuments at the Commonwealth Graves cemetery in the city.

Libyan authorities have failed to arrest the perpetrators of the April grave attacks despite the film footage.

This new bombing will increase the pressure on Libya's government to control militias, following the dramatic storming of Tripoli's international airport by a militia from the town of Tarhuna on Monday, and the capture of the prime minister's office in Tripoli by another militia last month.

Security personnel guard the US consulate in Libya's second city, Benghazi, after a bomb exploded outside its gates

War crimes chief says national justice would be preferable to that of the ICC, which has spent months wrangling with Tripoli

The US is backing Libya in its dispute with the International Criminal Court as Tripoli and The Hague wrestle over jurisdiction to try Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, the son of the former dictator.

The US war crimes chief, Stephen Rapp, said Washington would like to see Gaddafi face a Libyan court because national justice is preferable – a reflection of continuing scepticism about the ICC even if cooperation has increased significantly since the open hostility of the Bush administration.

"Our preference is to try cases in the national system if you can have a process there that meets minimal standards of fair justice. The Libyan government says they can do that," said Rapp. "We certainly would like to see the Libyans provide a fair and appropriate justice at the national level. It won't be the same thing that happens in The Hague but The Hague is only for a relative handful of cases and the international system we see developing is one where countries do these cases themselves with international assistance, sometimes with international participation."

The ICC and the post-revolutionary administration in Tripoli have spent months wrangling over who has the greater authority to try Gaddafi for crimes he is alleged to have committed during last year's revolution, including the killing of unarmed protestors.

Gaddafi was captured by a revolutionary militia which has so far refused to surrender him either to the Tripoli or the ICC. Muammar Gaddafi was also indicted, but he is now dead, along with the regime's intelligence chief, Abdullah al-Senoussi, who is being held in Mauritania.

The new administration in Tripoli argues that Gaddafi should be tried at the scene of his crimes, Libya. The ICC last week dropped its demand that he be immediately handed over and said that he can remain in Libya while the court decides who has first claim.

Under the ICC statutes, it has jurisdiction if a government is unable or unwilling to put an accused on trial. Among other requirements for a national government to take precedence is that it has the ability to hold a fair trial.
The ICC chief prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, last week told the Security Council, which authorised the prosecutions, that the dispute is a first for the 10-year-old court.

"This is the first time in the short history of the International Criminal Court that a state is requesting jurisdiction to conduct a national investigation against the same individual and for the same incidents under investigation by the International Criminal Court," Moreno-Ocampo said. "The challenge goes to the heart of the system of justice established in 1998 by the Rome Statute: national states have the primary obligation to conduct proceedings and the International Criminal Court's intervention will be complementary."

Lawyers for the Libyan government have argued that it has the ability to conduct a fair trial and should be permitted to do so "in furtherance of building a new and democratic Libya governed by the rule of law".

"To deny the Libyan people this historic opportunity to eradicate the long-standing culture of impunity would be manifestly inconsistent (with the principles of the ICC)," it said.

Rapp, who was the initial prosecutor at the war crimes trial of the former Liberian president, Charles Taylor, and was chief prosecutor at the Rwanda tribunal trying the leaders of the 1994 genocide, backed that position. Rapp, who is now head of the office of global criminal justice in Washington, said it is important where possible for the trials to be where the offenses were committed.

"It was an important part of this court that it would be at the scene of the crime, that it would be in Freetown," he said. The Rwanda genocide trials, held in neighbouring Tanzania, were criticised by survivors as too distant.

In contrast, an ad hoc special court was established in Sierra Leone with local and foreign judges to try most of those accused of crimes against humanity in the country's long civil war. But Taylor, who as president of neighbouring Liberia backed the rebels in Sierra Leone in return for diamonds, was moved for trial at The Hague using ICC facilities but still under the authority of the special court.

"Frankly I think we could have tried the Charles Taylor case just fine in Freetown," said Rapp. "But there was great concern, particularly in Liberia, that his presence in the region could be exploited for further instability."

The US support for Tripoli's position reflects its longstanding preference for ad hoc international courts, such as those that dealt with war crimes in Bosnia, Rwanda and Sierra Leone. That is in part borne out of continuing wariness of the ICC even if relations have improved dramatically under Obama.

The Bush administration, which joined Libya, Iraq, Israel and China in opposing establishment of ICC, was openly hostile to the court including seeking guarantees of immunity from prosecution for US citizens. However it later tempered its opposition, permitting the UN security council to refer crimes committed in Darfur to the ICC. The Obama administration has developed a working relationship with the court.

Behind the killing by drone strike of al-Qaida's No 2 lies a story of the senseless brutality by which the US makes its enemies

"A man for all seasons … He's a warrior. He's a poet. He's a scholar. He's a pundit. He's a military commander. And he's a very charismatic, young, brash rising star within …"

This statement could easily be construed as praise, even admiration, for the possessor of such qualities – until one reads who and what it's referring to: "… al-Qaida, and I think he has become the heir apparent to Osama bin Laden in terms of taking over the entire global jihadist movement." So says Jarret Brachman, a former CIA analyst and Westpoint research director, regarding Abu Yahya al-Libi, who was reportedly killed in a US drone-strike in Waziristan this week.

Last September, on a visit to Libya, I met with a rebel military commander who told me that his country wanted "a good relationship with the Americans". That man was Abu Yahya's brother.

I couldn't help wondering at the time, just two weeks after the fall of Tripoli, whether he'd shared his views with his brother, who I knew was regarded by the US as a high-ranking of member of al-Qaida. This was a bizarre paradox: the people I'd come to see, including Sami al-Saadi and Abdel Hakim Belhadj, had been, along with their families, victims of rendition to Gaddafi's Libya instigated by the British government. Yet, now, the cause of these men and that of the duplicitous nations that had facilitated their rendition and torture did, at least for the short term, coincide.

During my stay in the Libyan capital, I visited the notorious Abu Salim prison, where both al-Saadi – who lost two brothers in the infamous 1996 prison-massacre – and Belhadj had been held. Spray-painted on one of the doors by rebels who had broken free from the prison were the words in Arabic: "Life [imprisonment] in Guantánamo is not even a day in Abu Salim." Perhaps that was an exaggeration, but I have also met Libyan former Guantánamo prisoners, who were held in both prisons, and they were not objecting tot his assessment.

I was also shown the cell and final abode of a rendition victim whose tortured testimony was used by the US to justify the invasion of Iraq. Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi's "confession, which asserted al-Qaida was in partnership with Saddam Hussain in obtaining WMD, was cited by US Secretary of State Colin Powell in 2003 as a source of credible information in his presentation to the UN security council, preceding Operation Iraqi Freedom. But there were no WMDs in Iraq and al-Qaida only materialised there afterwards, and as a direct result of the invasion. A year later, Ibn al-Sheikh retracted his statement; after being bounced around Egypt, Mauritania, Morocco, Jordan, Afghanistan and perhaps Poland, he was returned to Libya where he was found dead in his cell in 2009.

Ibn al-Sheikh's testimony had been taken during interrogations in Mubarak's Egypt, where he'd been sent by the CIA – in a coffin. Prior to that, he was held at the Bagram internment facility, which is where I first learned heard about him after the CIA threatened me with his fate if I didn't cooperate.

Abu Yahya al-Libi was also held in Bagram from 2002, until his dramatic escape in 2005. I was there in 2002, but I did not see him or any of the other three who escaped with him. However, after my release, I did see an interview on the al-Arabiyya news channel, in which Aby Yahya not only described the escape in detail, but also the conditions in Bagram and his experience as a captive of the US.

Having spent so long in Bagram, I found it hard to believe that they had escaped; I saw one man beaten to death during an escape attempt. I also recalled how the CIA had told me that they would "fake" an escape for me if I agreed to work for them, which would springboard me into al-Qaida automatically. But after having heard the detail in which Abu Yahya described the escape, and his actions thereafter, I believe it was genuine. And coupled with his knowledge and the qualities Brachman alludes to above, the escape is precisely what took him to the leadership of al-Qaida. Hardly anyone had heard of him before that.

I've always maintained that Bagram was much worse than Guantánamo; I was looking forward to the latter after being in the former for almost a year. Being punched and kicked, shackled naked to other prisoners and dragged to communal showers, forcibly shaved, hands chained to the tops of cage doors and left suspended were just some of the daily occurrences we all witnessed or experienced. The worst for me was hearing the screams of a woman who I had thought for a time was my own wife. Mercifully, it wasn't, but I am convinced it was someone's wife, mother, daughter or sister; and Abu Yahya and his comrades did more than hear a woman.

Of all the abuses he describes in his account, the presence of a woman and her humiliation and degradation were the most inflammatory to all the prisoners – and they would never forget it. He describes how she was regularly stripped naked and manhandled by male guards, and how she used to scream incessantly in isolation for two years. He said prisoners protested her treatment, going on hunger strike, feeling ashamed they could do nothing to help. He described her in detail: a Pakistani mother – torn away from her children – in her mid-thirties, who had begun to lose her mind. Her number, he said, was 650.

After their escape, which was notably downplayed by the media at the time, Abu Yahya and his comrades all became fighters with al-Qaida and joined the war against the US. He was the last of the four, as one was later captured, another killed in Iraq and the other killed by a drone strike in Afghanistan.

In 2007, I interviewed another so-called al-Qaida leader in the making: Anwar al-Awlaki had been imprisoned in Yemen and interrogated by US agents. Something traumatic, which he was not prepared to discuss with me, had happened during the encounter with the Americans; and not long after, he went from condemning the September 11 attacks to becoming a regional commander of al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, before also being killed by a US drone strike.

Abu Yahya and al-Awlaki, I believe, were both creations of the US-led "war on terror". There were opportunities in the case of the latter to enter into a meaningful dialogue to create understanding, while the former, who also spoke of the decent US soldiers he met, could have been given humane treatment, instead of yet another excuse to hate America.

Killing with drones may have the short-term effect of eliminating a few obscure enemies. But with all the civilian casualties, the strategy is generating still more hostility, at a time when everyone admits that the war – on the ground, and for hearts and minds – is being lost.

The UN and Nato must heed the lessons of Kosovo and Bosnia: that diplomacy and force are effective only in alliance

Kofi Annan, the UN special envoy to Syria, did not mince his words when the security council met yesterday. "If things do not change, the future is likely to be one of brutal repression, massacres, sectarian violence and even all-out civil war," he said.

The UN's current international impotence is devastating to behold, with Russia and China holding out against the US, Britain and France over the issue of foreign intervention in Syria. But this was the situation the world faced with Libya, as Gaddafi's forces closed on Benghazi; the crucial change came when the Arab League demanded the security council intervene. We are at that point again, with the Arab League head, Nabil Elaraby, asking Ban Ki-moon to submit the fighting in Syria to the security council under chapter VII of the UN charter, as a threat to world peace and security.

The danger of fighting spilling over to Syria's neighbours – Iran, Iraq, Turkey, Jordan, Lebanon and Israel – is very real. Indeed, by any objective reading of the charter, the security council should pass a resolution authorising the council to take measures including military force.

However, this is where the problem in the security council is at its most acute: to use force against the Syrian army means Nato or US forces in a multinational grouping. Russia and China do not trust either arrangement. Both feel that when they abstained to allow the invocation of chapter VII in the case of Libya, the wording was thereafter deliberately misinterpreted to force the Gaddafi regime out of power and create the chaos that resulted in his summary killing. There is some substance to this complaint, and not just in relation to Libya but also to the experience of the UN's involvement in the 2003 Iraq war and Nato's bombing of Kosovo in 1999.

However, another model offers a positive precedent. In December 1992 Cyrus Vance, the UN special envoy to Bosnia, and I, asked Boutros Boutros-Ghali, the then UN secretary general, to write to the Nato secretary general and ask that they start joint planning for an intervention in Bosnia-Herzegovina. This approach ultimately paved the way for a no-fly zone and a much delayed but successful military intervention by Nato in August 1995. We need something similar now: a UN-Nato plan supported by Russia, in which Nato, led by Turkey, would provide the threat of force needed to support Annan's diplomacy.

We have learned much from past conflicts about Nato-UN and Nato-Russian joint activity, and those lessons could be drawn on now with regard to Syria. In Bosnia Russian troops worked very well with Nato on the ground to implement the Dayton accords. In the case of Kosovo, the experience was not so good – in part because Nato did not give Boris Yeltsin and his peace envoy, Viktor Chernomyrdin, sufficient credit for their diplomacy. Nato falsely claimed that the withdrawal of Serbian forces from Kosovo was purely the result of their 78 days of bombing. Quite apart from the basic misunderstanding of the important role that Moscow played in twisting President Milosevic's arm, this led to a mistaken belief in the strength of air power alone. Air power can tilt the balance of fighting on the ground, but only if it is used as an adjunct to diplomacy; equally, successful diplomacy very often depends on the ultimate threat of force.

In the case of Libya, we saw what happens when there is too little UN diplomatic involvement. Early on, a representative of the secretary general was appointed, but with little scope for working effectively with Nato. Here in the UK we regard that intervention as a great success, but Libyan government forces were only able to retake control of Tripoli airport from militia groups this week, and we have still much to do to achieve a stable government there.

In Syria, the situation in this regard is much better. Annan is a credible figure capable of working with Nato and Russia, and having good relations with the security council and some political leaders within Syria. In this way the threat, and if need be the reality, of military force can more easily be put behind working out a strategy for a transitional administration in Syria, if Russian interests can be accommodated.

Many will ask: why bother with Russia? The answer lies in Kosovo, a state whose independent status is still not recognised by many countries – including five in the EU – because the intervention lacked UN authority.

After US and British mistakes over the handling of the war in Iraq, and now Afghanistan, we are living in a new era of what I have called "constrained intervention". The days of going it alone, without UN authority, are over. Russia can't be pushed aside – its interests must be taken into account. It is encouraging that the Russian Middle East peace envoy has now said that the Annan peace plan can be adjusted.

Russia's main naval port in the Mediterranean is in Syria. Russia supplies the Syrian government with arms and has close intelligence links. This gives Russia's leaders leverage if they can be persuaded to use it; they could ease out the Assads and create a transitional administration. The international community must recognise, however, that Russia is not about to abandon its political interests in that country any more than the US would abandon its vital interests and military bases in south-east Asia, Diego Garcia and Guantánamo, to name but three areas.

At the same time, Russia knows that it can't run for too long in the UN against the tide of Arab feeling in the Middle East. Under President Putin, Russia has already been helpful over Afghanistan: using its influence in surrounding countries to guarantee safe exit routes for the 2014 Nato withdrawal. In nuclear weapons talks with Iran, too, China and Russia are working constructively with the US, Britain and France – the UN permanent five – joined for this negotiation by Germany.

The immediate challenge in Syria is to hammer out guidelines for a Nato military threat, led by Turkey, to intervene – not to replace, but to strengthen Annan's diplomacy. Both Russia and the Arab League will have key roles, as will the US, UK and France.

The best mechanism for breaking the impasse and drawing up such guidelines is the Nato-Russia council, which has formally existed since 2002. Sadly, to date it has not been very effective, but over Syria it could start to fulfil its potential for providing a forum for discussions. The Russians know that the prelude to any no-fly zone is cruise missile and air attacks, co-ordinated by Nato, on ground-to-air missile sites in Syria. To start detailed discussions about this now in the forum of the Nato-Russia council, prior to agreeing a specific UN resolution on force, might ease Russian concerns. The scale of the humanitarian tragedy in Syria demands that we try.

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The rebel strongholds of Benghazi, Misrata and Zintan have become increasingly independent of Tripoli's new regime

National flags from around the world flutter in the bright sunshine by a city gate made of shipping containers painted in the Libyan national colours. A uniformed militiaman examines my passport, then waves me through with a smile. Welcome to the Republic of Misrata.

Libya's third largest city, recipient of a six-month pummelling during last year's revolution against the regime of Muammar Gaddafi, has transformed itself into what is an independent state in all but name. Libya is due to hold national elections in 10 days, but these look like they may be delayed as any sense of post-Gaddafi national unity dissipated long ago.

Misrata is divorced from the new government, which it views as secretive, dictatorial and heavy-handed, and, as a city with a long tradition of trading, is going its own way. Shops and restaurants are being fixed up, business is brisk, and there is enough traffic on the pockmarked streets to create honking traffic jams.

Qasr Ahmed, Libya's biggest container port, is the jewel in the city's crown. The harbour that once spouted the geysers of incoming rockets is now jammed with shipping, and I get a tour in the only tug in Libya that can do something complicated with its engines that allows it to move sideways. The port authority has decided to run the place without reference to central government, which means that the port is open 24 hours a day, and also means that Misrata gets to keep the tugboat.

"In the old days there would be 12 forms and it would take 10 days to pay all the bribes," says Nasser Mokhtar, who printed photographs of the shaheed – martyrs – in the war in his print shop and is now back at his clothing import business.

Now, he explains, there are no bribes; customs officers fear the wrath of the port authority if they try it on.

Misrata held its own city elections in February, the first anywhere in Libya for four decades, and the new council is now busy organising the police, army, education and health services.

And that is the problem. The price of this success has been a divorce from a central government. "We don't want to be independent, we want Libya to be like us," says Farouk Ben Amin, a former rebel fighter now working in the family import business, who has shaved off his rebel beard and looks 10 years younger.

It's not just Misrata. From all points of the compass, revolt, even revolution, is in the air as Libya's former rebel towns go their own way.

More than 100 miles from Misrata is Zintan, a humble metropolis nestling in the cool foothills of the jagged Jabal Nafusa mountains.

In the war, Zintan's rebels were one half of the pincer movement – Misrata was the other – that captured Tripoli. Its units poured out of the mountains and into the west of the city, while Misrata's units punched in from the east. Now the mood in both cities is suspicious about the ruling National Transitional Council; not least about what it is doing with the £1bn a month now being earned as oil exports pick up.

Zintan's uneasiness has seen it change its mind about handing over Libya's top war crimes suspect, Saif al-Gaddafi, son of the late dictator, who continues to languish in a fortified villa on the edge of town. "It is safer to hold his trial here; the government is very weak, they can't control their country," said Attaher Eturki, the ever-smiling city council leader, his crisp English a product of a degree in engineering in Leicester a couple of years ago. "We have good security here."

To the south, meanwhile, battles between the Tibu, a people who inhabit a large stretch of the Sahara, and Arab tribes have left 200 dead and the towns divided into war zones.

The most serious challenge to central authority is Benghazi, where the revolution began in February last year. Like Misrata, Benghazi held its own elections earlier this year, and like Misrata the city council is busy assuming powers for itself at the expense of central government.

Some in the city want to go further. Benghazi is the capital of Cyrenaica, which with the regions of Tripolitania and Fezzan make up Libya, and many citizens are unhappy that the province gets only 60 of the 200 seats in the national elections. A self-proclaimed Council of Barqa – the Arab name for Cyrenaica – is urging a boycott of the national elections unless it gets a bigger slice of seats.

Benghazi is a good place to feel the continuing heartbeat of the revolution: teams of teenage volunteers collect the rubbish, fix up the streets and paint white lines on the highways. Those white lines zigzag alarmingly, but the citizens appreciate the effort; a vivid contrast to the potholed roads of Tripoli.

It's not independence but democracy that the people want, says Hanna El Gallal, a human rights activist. "We got rid of Gaddafi, but not the regime," she tells me. She points to the secrecy of the NTC, which, despite promising democracy, keeps its meetings secret and refuses even to disclose its full membership. "We didn't do a revolution and our people did not die to bring a new dictatorship."

When the NTC does issue decrees, Libyans are aghast; last month it issued law number 37, making it a criminal offence to criticise the "17 February revolution".

Human Rights Watch pointed out in a scathing report that the law is, word for word, almost the same as Gaddafi's rule banning criticism.

In London last month, Libyan prime minister Abdurrahim el-Keib insisted that the law would soon be cancelled, but failed to explain why the government had introduced it in the first place.

"The NTC don't mean to act this way," said an official with a western embassy in Tripoli. "But they don't know any other way."

The NTC took power in the chaos of last year's revolution in Benghazi, led by Mustafa Abdul Jalil, a career judge, and the only politician in Libya to enjoy widespread support.

That support comes from the mark he made when he resigned as Gaddafi's justice minister in 2010, making the announcement on live television, an unheard of event in the former dictatorship. But Jalil's star is starting to wane, with Libyans divided about whether he is responsible for the NTC's heavyhandedness, or too weak to stop it.

And then there is history: Libya is a young country, named as such by its Italian occupiers only in 1934. Before that, Tripolitania, Cyrenaica and Fezzan were separate provinces.

There is wild talk of a second uprising on the streets of former rebel towns, but the weapon of choice is not the gun but the ballot box. City elections have been rushed through while the central authorities dither with the national election, and the municipalities adopt their own powers. El Gallal explained that, if the elections nationally go well, all will be fine. If not, Benghazi will fall back on its own city administration. "If it (the national election) goes wrong, we don't need the national congress," she said.

Back in Tripoli, the signs are that the national elections are going very wrong indeed. The NTC insists that the vote will take place, as promised, on 19 June. But staff at the election commission tell me that they have yet to agree the list of candidates. Giving Libya's enthusiastic political parties only a few days to campaign will cause uproar. But so will a delay, stoking fears by the rebels that the NTC plans to hang on to power.

None of which is good for business: Foreign companies are staying away from Libya, scared off by all the uncertainties. Meanwhile, unemployment remains high, pensions and wages are often unpaid, and rubbish mounts up in vast piles outside the gates of Gaddafi's ruined palace of Bab Azizia.

And then there are the militias. Nowhere has the government's failure to convince Libyans of its good intentions been more visible than with the security forces. The decision to staff the grandly named National Army with Gaddafi-era generals has, unsurprisingly, seen no recruitment from the former rebels.

Instead, security is being entrusted to a national gendarmerie, the 60,000-strong Special Security Committee (SSC). The pay is good and rebels and former Gaddafi units have joined en masse, but the force is distrusted by the armies of Misrata and Zintan.

SSC units last month kidnapped and tortured a prominent health ministry official and, despite pleas from the minister, the government has not called them to account.

Nor has the SSC dared to move against Islamist units in eastern Libya who have vandalised Commonwealth war graves, launched bomb attacks on a UN convoy and a Red Cross office, and last week bombed the US consulate in Benghazi.

And it was Tripoli militia units, not the SSC, which took back control of the international airport last week after it was stormed by a militia group from Tarhuna who were upset about the abduction of their commander.

At Tripoli's luxurious Rixos Hotel, I meet NTC member Musa al-Koni amid rolling lawns and burbling fountains. The fondness of NTC executives for rooms here, at taxpayers' expense, is a staple of the capital's booming media.

"We made so many mistakes, so many," Koni says. He was once Libya's ambassador to Mali, until the revolution broke out, and in March last year he decided to jump ship after being ordered to recruit mercenaries to come to Gaddafi's aid.

"Old people are the problem," he says. "Old people stole the revolution in Tunisia, they stole it in Egypt, and they are stealing it here," he says.

A few days after we met, he announced that he had quit. Two new NTC members had taken his place, he said, though their identities were being kept secret.

Around the back of the Rixos is a unit of former rebels, the national guard, which is part of the Libyan National Shield, a loose alliance of Libya's militias that bypasses the defence ministry. I hitch a lift with them from positions around Bani Walid, a still restive former Gaddafi town. Arriving at the hotel, an argument starts with men across the road in the sprawling blue-collar Abu Salim neighbourhood.

Like Bani Walid, Abu Salim spent the war backing Gaddafi, and now they shout at the guard, accusing them of being out-of-town interlopers. As the argument worsens, several guardsmen come forward and shout back that they are from Tripoli, and the revolution is safe. The shouting gets worse. Traffic stops. The guardsmen cock their weapons.

A tall, bearded, middle-aged guardsman, who worked before the revolution for an oil company in Paris and London, leads me away through the hotel grounds. "I want to leave Libya," he says.

"Why?"

"These people," he says, gesturing to Abu Salim. "They are poor. Gaddafi had all this oil and he gave them nothing. And still they love him."

Diplomats in Libya worry about where all this is going: not least because while the NTC has the power – and the oil – it is the former rebel militias who have the guns.

In the first public in-depth study of Libya's militias, Oxford University researcher Brian McQuinn says that militias in Misrata and Zintan are well organised and disciplined.

Misrata alone accounts for just under half the total militia units in the country, with slightly more than half of Libya's heavy weapons, including 820 tanks. Both are enthusiastic members of the National Shield, which now has four regional divisions. "Unions of revolutionary brigades from across the country have, in co-ordination, created a national army-in-waiting," he writes.

Exactly what they are waiting for remains to be seen.

Much hangs on the elections. If the NTC botches them, or tries to use its proxies to hang on to power, Libya will be in trouble. At best, the former rebel cities will go their own way, creating administrative gridlock for the country and an economic nightmare. At worst, as a rebel militiaman told me last year on the frontline at Ajdabiya, south of Benghazi: "If we don't like the new government, well, now we know how to do revolution."

International criminal court representatives were on their way to meet Saif Gaddafi in Zintan and had assurances from authorities

A delegation from the international criminal court has been detained by Libyan authorities on their way to meet Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, son of former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.

The ICC's president, ICC Sang-Hyun Song, has expressed his "concern" for their safety and demanded their immediate release.

The four-member delegation included one of two lawyers the court has assigned to defend the legal interests of Gaddafi, who has been held by revoluntionary fighters since his capture in November.

In a statement, the ICC president said the group had been held since Thursday. "We are very concerned about the safety of our staff in the absence of any contact with them.

"These four international civil servants have immunity when on an official ICC mission. I call on the Libyan authorities to immediately take all necessary measures to ensure their safety and security and to liberate them."

The group had travelled to Libya on Wednesday to meet Gaddafi in Zintan. They had been assured by the authorities that they would allow them to meet him.

The former dictator's son has been indicted by the ICC for crimes against humanity but Libya's interim government has so far refused to hand him over for trial in the Netherlands, insisting he should be tried in his home country.

Reports suggested the delegation was detained after one of its lawyers was found to be carrying suspicious documents, including a letter from Gaddafi's former right-hand man Mohammed Ismail.

The lawyer that represents Libyan interests at the Hague, Ahmed Al-Jehani, said Melinda Taylor, an Australian defence lawyer, had shared paperwork that could "harm Libya's national security".

Members of the brigade holding Gaddafi said they would not release the ICC representatives before questioning them.

Electoral commission says preparations for Libya's first multi-party vote in more than 50 years have run over schedule

Libya's first election in more than half a century will take place 18 days later than planned because of logistical challenges, the electoral commission has said .

The election will now take place on 7 July. Nuri al-Abbar, head of the electoral commission, said crucial preparations for the election – including voter registration and vetting candidates to make sure they had no links to Muammar Gaddafi – had run over schedule, making it impossible to hold the vote on the original date of 19 June.

"We never planned on postponing the election, we worked hard for the election to be on time," Abbar said. "I don't want to blame anybody for the postponement, I just want to make sure the elections are transparent."

The election will be a milestone for Libya as it seeks to build democratic institutions after last year's revolt. It has no functioning bureaucracy, poor security and only a distant memory of holding nationwide elections.

During his 42-year rule Gaddafi banned direct elections, saying they were bourgeois and anti-democratic. The last time Libya held a multi-party national election was in 1952, under the reign of King Idris.

The election set for next month is for a national assembly whose job it will be to oversee the government, draft a new constitution and schedule a new round of polls. Libya is currently governed by the National Transitional Council, an unelected body of civic and tribal leaders and Gaddafi opponents that is recognised internationally as the country's legitimate leadership.

Libyans began registering for the election in May and about 2.7 million people, or 80% of eligible voters, have put their name down to participate.

In the assembly, 80 of the 200 seats will go to political parties and the rest to independent candidates. Dozens of new parties have sprung up offering a vibrant mix of democratic, Islamist, free market and nationalist agendas. Islamists in particular are expected to perform well.

Libya is riven with armed brigades who risk carving up the nation but a credible government could bring the country together

Last week, Tripoli airport was seized in broad daylight by several hundred heavily armed Tarhuna militiamen, who parked armoured vehicles on the runway preventing all flights. Those officially tasked with maintaining the airport's security could do little more than shrug.

Only later, after a fierce gun battle with thousands of fighters from at least two different brigades loyal to the ruling National Transition Council (NTC) – which pass as "government forces" – and the arrival of "pro-government" helicopters from Misrata, did the pro-Gaddafi Tarhuna surrender.

This chaotic scene is illustrative of the current state of affairs in Libya, where the interim NTC has been unable to disarm the disparate militia that fought in the revolution – not all on the same side.

These militia are engaged in turf wars – over whole towns, Tripoli streets, and even valuable commercial property such as hotels – with other battles based on money, tribal loyalties or ethnicity. Recently, the entire black population of a town in the west, Tawergha, was evicted by a neighbouring militia.

Some estimates put the number of militia at about 400, in a country where, in the absence of a properly constituted army, police force or judiciary, an armed brigade is the only form of security.

On a recent trip to Tunis, I spoke to the head of airport security, who reported that flights arriving from Libya are his worst headache, because they frequently bear the most brazen smugglers of arms, drugs or people. Nor is this general lawlessness confined to the streets. Billions of dollars of unfrozen Libyan assets are said to have disappeared from the national treasury. Last month, Libyan finance minister, Hassan Ziglam, threatened to resign over the "wastage of public money". In April a scheme to distribute $1.4bn among the various rebel militia was suspended among allegations of fraud and corruption.

The current state of anarchy in Libya has international implications. Without border controls, migrants from Africa who wish to cross the Mediterranean to Europe can pass unchallenged through Libya. And this week, the Abdul Rahman brigades – an al-Qaida affiliate – were able to attack the US consulate in Benghazi in retaliation for the killing of Abu Yahya al-Libi, Ayman al-Zawahiri's deputy.

It is not only law and order that has failed to materialise in post-revolutionary Libya. Mountains of rubbish have been accumulating on the capital's streets since December, since there is no organised waste disposal system, and the main landfill site has been commandeered by an armed militia who refuse access to rubbish trucks.

Locals joke that it is only traffic lights that still work in Tripoli – but they are completely ignored. Of course the new Libya was always going to face teething problems – for 40 years all decisions were taken by a handful of people and implemented with an iron fist. But the problem in Libya is that, unlike Egypt, there is no administrative infrastructure. There were no government departments under Gaddafi and no civil service to advise the new incumbents how to run a country.

The international high-fliers who became the "Friends of Libya" during the struggle to depose Gaddafi have not been seen since the NTC ensured a return to pre-revolutionary levels of oil supply. Advice and practical training from these more sophisticated countries could have been invaluable for the nation-building and construction of civil institutions the country so desperately needs.

Instead, all the divisions and differences that were suppressed under Gadaffi's totalitarian regime are emerging with destructive vigour. Administrative fragmentation is also a real prospect. In March, the oil-rich eastern region, Barqa, declared itself a semi-autonomous state with Benghazi as its capital. The east has always felt marginalised and deprived compared with Tripoli and the west of the country, and consolidated its self-determination last month by holding the first local elections in Libya for 40 years.

In a bid to halt the disintegration of Libya, the NTC has called for national reconciliation talks. Paradoxically, these include negotiations with pro-Gaddafi tribal confederations. At the end of May, Ali al-Salabi, a senior Muslim Brotherhood figure on the NTC, held secret meetings in Cairo with the former regime's "tribal co-ordinator", Ali al-Ahwal and Gaddafi's cousin, Ahmad Gaddaf al-Dam. At the same time, the NTC's own conduct has thrown up barriers to unity. Amid accusations of human rights breaches, the NTC passed a new law on 2 May granting immunity from prosecution for those acting "with the goal of promoting or protecting the revolution". As Human Rights Watch observes, this politics-based approach to "selective justice" is exactly what the Libyans fought so hard to overcome.

Elections to a new, 200-member parliament have [likely] been postponed but remain imminent, and this is the brightest prospect for Libya's future. The new legislative body will replace the NTC, appoint a government and write the constitution. There is a lot of enthusiasm for the ballot box, with 80% of those eligible to vote having registered to do so.

Libya has all the raw materials for a thriving and prosperous country – vast oil wealth and a small population. If the elections produce a credible government representing all Libya's people, the militias might voluntarily combine to form a national army and ensure nationwide security.

Anything remains possible in the new Libya, so long as its leaders do not follow in the footsteps of the erstwhile "Friends of Libya" and abandon themselves to self-interest.

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Infestations of locusts could destroy farmers' efforts to replenish food stocks in the Sahel, an area suffering drought and hunger

Northern Niger and Mali – areas already hit by a devastating food crisis and civil conflict – are facing a new threat in the form of locusts. The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) is warning that swarms of locusts are moving south from Libya and Algeria, and that early rains across the Sahel have led to the sprouting of vegetation that the insects can feed on. The warning comes as farmers across the Sahel prepare to start their annual crop planting season in the hope that a good harvest could replenish food stocks.

Celeste Hicks spoke to Keith Cressman, FAO's senior locust forecasting officer, about the impending threat.

CH: Which regions are most likely to be affected?

KC: The locusts' breeding grounds are in southern Algeria and southern Libya near the town of Ghat. When the locusts mature, they begin to move south – pushed by the prevailing winds – towards northern Niger, the Arlit and Agadez regions, Air mountains, Tamesna Plains and Djada Plateau regions. They may also end up in northern Mali in the Kidal and Gao regions, north-west Chad in the Borkou, Ennedi and Tibesti areas, and Mauritania. They may move even further south into Sahel farmlands, as they can travel 100-200km in a day. However, their advance eventually gets halted when the winds that carry them south meet the ITCZ [inter tropical convergence zone], which brings the west African rainy season, and the prevailing winds coming from the south. This year, the first groups of locusts were reported in northern Niger around Arlit on 30 May – this is early in the season.

CH: Why is this year different to previous years?

KC: Infestations were reported early in the season in southern Libya near Ghat and in southern Algeria after unusual rains in October and November – they had been able to grow quickly. In addition, it has already started raining in some parts of the Sahel. There have been rains in Iriba in north-east Chad and the Adrar des Iforghas in northern Mali. This means vegetation is already available for the locusts to eat as they move south and this has led to the early formation of swarms. This coincides with the planting season for farmers across the Sahel, and when the locusts are young they are at their most voracious. If the rains continue throughout the season [until October], there is a danger the locusts could have a second generation in one season. They can multiply their numbers 16 times in one generation. The last desert locust swarm came in 2003-05 when up to 80% of the harvest in Mauritania was eaten, and vast numbers arrived in regions as far apart as Darfur and Morocco.

CH: Is this linked to the conflict in Libya?

KC: In a normal year, Algeria and Libya would have been able to control most of the local swarms and prevent their movement south, but insecurity on the border is preventing full access for local teams and FAO experts. Libya's capacity to carry out control efforts has been affected in the last year. Teams that normally monitor the situation are no longer working, and equipment and vehicles have gone missing. And the locusts are moving from one insecure area to another. If they get into northern Mali [where MNLA rebels and the Islamist Ansar Dine groups are vying for control], there is practically no local authority there, and no one left with the experience of dealing with this.

CH: Can the situation be controlled?

KC: The pest control teams in all countries are usually very good: there has been a lot of technical advance and best practice training in recent years, it's just they have not been able to get access. We use generic pesticides to control the desert locusts, usually by spraying large areas from an aeroplane. But obviously this depends on whether the teams can get access or not. In Mali, teams cannot get in at all while in northern Niger they need a military escort. Two things need to happen – we need to mobilise the teams as soon as possible, and increase public awareness of the problem so that local people can tell us when they see swarms approaching, especially in the crop-producing parts of central and south Niger and Mali.

International criminal court representatives in Tripoli to negotiate release of staff detained after visiting Saif al-Islam Gaddafi

Representatives of the international criminal court are in Tripoli to try to secure the release of a detained delegation visiting Muammar Gaddafi's captured son, a Libyan official has said.

The four-member delegation was being held in the western mountain town of Zintan after one of its lawyers, Australian Melinda Taylor, was accused of carrying documents for Saif al-Islam Gaddafi regarded as suspicious, a Libyan lawyer and a militia member said on Saturday.

The president of the international war crimes court has demanded their immediate release.

"An (ICC) delegation arrived today in Tripoli. They are holding meetings with officials about this," said the Libyan official, who did not give further details.

Reflecting the country's wider problem of powerful local militias and a weak central government, the Zintan brigade holding Islam said it would not heed the government's request to release the four ICC staff before questioning them.

"They are still under investigation," a member of the brigade said. "The visiting delegation won't see them just yet."

Australia's foreign minister, Bob Carr, said he had spoken to Libya's deputy foreign minister, Muhamed Aziz, about Taylor's detention. He said Aziz had confirmed in a telephone call that Taylor was "being held by Libyan authorities in Zintan and would be detained pending further inquiries".

"I raised Australia's concern for Ms Taylor's welfare and Mr Aziz assured me that she is safe and well," Carr said. "I emphasised our strong interest in seeing the matter resolved quickly and urged Mr Aziz to facilitate full consular access to Ms Taylor."

Carr said he had also spoken to Taylor's husband and to the president of the international criminal court.

Islam, held in Zintan since his desert capture in November, is wanted by the ICC for crimes during an uprising in 2011 that ended his father's 42-year rule. Libya's new rulers say he should be tried in his home country.

The ICC has previously expressed concern at the conditions under which Islam is being held. Human rights groups also question whether Libya's justice system can meet the standards of international law.

A Libyan lawyer said the suspicious documents included letters from Islam's former aide Mohammed Ismail, as well as blank documents signed by the prisoner.

The international court said Taylor, 36, had worked for the ICC since 2006 as counsel in the office that represents indictees' interests before the appointment of a formal defence counsel.

The ICC named the three other staff members as Helene Assaf, a translator and interpreter since 2005; Esteban Peralta Losilla, the chief of the court's counsel support section; and Alexander Khodakov, a Russian career diplomat who is the external relations and co-operation senior adviser at the registry of the ICC.

• Army shells Homs and al-Haffa near Latakia, activists say
• Annan calls for UN observers to be allowed into al-Haffa
• Hague says Syria on edge of civil war

• Read the latest summary

4.23pm: Here's a summary of events on Syria today:

• International envoy Kofi Annan has expressed alarm at the escalation of fighting in Syria and called for UN observers to be allowed into al-Haffa near Latakia. In a statement he said he was particularly worried about the recent shelling in Homs as well as reports of the use of mortar, helicopters and tanks in the town of al-Haffa, Latakia. "There are indications that a large number of civilians are trapped in these towns," his office said in a statement. Syrian state media broadcast what it claimed to be terrorists preparing a massacre in al-Haffa.

• William Hague told parliament that Syria is on the edge of civil war, with credible reports of al-Qaida involvement. He also revealed that Britain has sent human rights observers to neighbouring countries to help document the "grotesque crimes" of the Assad regime.

• Journalists and activists have documented repeated bombardment of opposition strongholds including Homs and Maarret Naaman. Photojournalist Nicole Tung said she had witnessed the bodies of nine people killed by shelling in Maarret Naaman (see 3.29pm).

• An opposition group in the rebel stronghold of Qusair, has condemned the Vatican after its official news agency claimed Christians had been ordered out of the town. The al-Qusair Revolution accused Agenzia Fides of trying to scare Christians on behalf of the Assad government.

• Unicef has expressed its outrage at the continuing killing of children in Syria, as video emerged purporting to show the bodies of 10 young children killed in the coastal city of Latakia over the weekend. Anthony Lake, Unicef's executive director, said: "Repeated calls for the protection of children by all parties in Syria have not yielded positive action."

• Video and satellite evidence showed a Syrian airbase being attacked after a battalion, armed with surface-to-air-missiles, defected to the opposition. Human Rights Watch expressed alarm at the proliferation of weapons in Syria as defections continue (see 11.17am).

• The new opposition leader Abdelbasset Sida has urged officials to defect from a regime he claims is on its last legs. "We are entering a sensitive phase. The regime is on its last legs," he told AFP after being elected leader of the Syrian National Council. "We call upon all officials in the regime and in the institutions to defect from the regime," he told reporters.

4.08pm: Britain's foreign secretary William Hague claims al-Qaida is committing attacks in Syria aimed at exacerbating the violence in Syria.

In a statement to parliament, he said Syria was on the edge of civil war.
And that there were credible reports of human rights abuses and sectarian attacks by armed opposition fighters.

But he also condemned the "grotesque crimes" of the Assad regime.

He revealed that Britain has sent a team of human rights experts to neighbouring countries to gather testimony from Syrians. Those that help document the Houla massacre were trained by the UK team, Hague claimed.

.@WilliamJHague: we're working closely with #USA & @UN to ensure evidence is collated & stored for use in a future legal process. #Syria

— Foreign Office (FCO) (@foreignoffice) June 11, 2012

3.46pm: Activists claim to be broadcasting live footage of the bombardment of Homs on the streaming site Bambuser.

Syrian_Scenes is translating some of the commentary.

"We have no medical supplies here. Many have died for lack of medical care. You see w/your own eyes children trapped under the rubble." Homs

— Michael Nahum (@Syrian_Scenes) June 11, 2012

Cameraman: "This shelling was brought to you by Kofi Annan and his plan." bambuser.com/v/2735300 #Homs

— Michael Nahum (@Syrian_Scenes) June 11, 2012

3.29pm: Maarret Naaman, between Idlib and Hama, is being repeatedly shelled according to freelance photographer Nicole Tung who witnessed some of the latest victims.

"I can confirm that I saw nine civilians who had been killed," she said in a Skype interview from a rebel base outside the town. "It is very real they are indiscriminately shelling civilian populations. The other day I was there, a 10- year-old girl had been injured by shrapnel. The nine bodies that I saw were civilians."

A doctor in the town told Tung, he had treated more than 100 patients, including children.

I saw the facility that he had been working from and it was just a house, and he was working with one bed and very few resources. The activists from mountainous regions bought in medical supplies. They can only provide first aid and triage.

Tung and another journalist have been covering the area under the protection of the Free Syrian Army. "There are parts of this mountainous area that is [under the protection of the FSA] and there are army checkpoints just three to four kilometres away. They [the army] are very much around and today they randomly opened fire on a car that was travelling in a village near Idlib, and killed four people including a woman."

Asked about clashes between rebels and the army she said:

From what I've been told by the FSA - most of what they do is provide protection for demonstrators. For the most part they are really not able to go up against tanks and other weapons that the Syrian army has. They are very limited in what they can to ... There are clashes here and there but it is not an every day occurrence. I personally have not seen clashes.

Asked if she was physically scared, she replied: "Probably not as much as the civilian population who have to go through this every night."

As mentioned in the interview, video has emerged purporting to show patients being treated on the floor in a make shift field clinic in Maaret Naaman. [Warning: disturbing content].

2.30pm: Syrian state media has broadcast what it claims is a call between two terrorists preparing to a commit a massacre in the al-Haffa near Latakia, shortly before the village was attacked.

It says the men want to blame the attack on the government.

The state news agency Sana quoted one man saying: "Line them up, film them and take off their [clothes] and say 'a massacre happened' and send the images to the media because there is an international move after two days."

It added:

Meanwhile, armed terrorist groups attacked the public and private institutions at al-Haffa area, burnt them and committed brutal killing operations against its people.

The armed groups also burnt the National Hospital and the al-Haffa Directorate, displaced the citizens and stole their houses.

The opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights claims al-Haffa was bombarded by government forces.

2.21pm: International envoy Kofi Annan (pictured) has expressed alarm at the escalation of fighting in Syria and called for UN observers to be allowed into al-Haffa in Latakia.

His office issued this statement:

The Joint Special Envoy for Syria Kofi Annan is gravely concerned by the latest reports of violence coming out of Syria and the escalation of fighting by both Government and opposition forces.

He is particularly worried about the recent shelling in Homs as well as reports of the use of mortar, helicopters and tanks in the town of Al-Haffa, Latakia. There are indications that a large number of civilians are trapped in these towns.

The Joint Special Envoy demands that the parties take all steps to ensure that civilians are not harmed, and further demands that entry of the UN Military Observers be allowed to the town of Al-Haffa immediately.

12.51pm: An opposition group in the rebel stronghold of Qusair, has condemned the Vatican after its official news agency claimed Christians had been ordered out of the town.

Agenzia Fides, the official Vatican news agency, claimed Christians had abandoned the town, between Homs and the Lebanese border, after an ultimatum from a Free Syrian Army commander.

It said:

Some mosques in the city have re-launched the message, announcing from the minarets: "Christians must leave Qusayr within six days, which expires this Friday."

... Fides sources insist that Islamic Salafist extremist groups, that are in the ranks of the armed opposition, consider Christians "infidels", they confiscate the goods, commit brief executions and are ready to start a "sectarian war".

The al-Qusair Revolution, an activists group in the town, expressed its shock at what it claimed was a false report by the Vatican's agency.

It accused Fides of scaremongering minorities on behalf of the Assad government.

In a statement it said:

We condemn the statement by the Vatican as the mosques never called out for our Christian brothers and sisters to leave the city and we also confirm that most of the Christian families fled with the Muslim families around two months ago due to the barbaric shelling as the regime used (and continues to use) heavy artillery and mortar shells on civilians ...

The statement [is] clearly [designed] to show Assad as the protector of minorities. It also acts to bring more fear into the hearts of minorities who are afraid of a free Syria which will be democratic and will include and respect all sects and religions under a just law system with all rights respected.

An article in the Israeli daily Haaretz, claims that in March the Vatican agency repeated unsubstantiated warnings about the expulsion of Christians from Homs, issued by the pro-regime website Syria Truth.

It said:

There is little reason to doubt the motivation of Vatican and church leaders, who after Iraq have become extremely worried about the fate of the remaining Christian communities in the Middle East.

Yet, over-the-top, sensationalist reporting by SyriaTruth and similarly pro-regime sites, combined with church leaders both in Syria and abroad responding by crying wolf before confirming the news, makes for an explosive and dangerous mix, with the potential of turning unfounded rumors or deliberate disinformation into self-fulfilling prophecies.

12.26pm: The BBC's Paul Danahar has more first accounts of the bombardment of Homs from the UN's base in the city.

UN observer pointed out to me a whirring sound in the air as we watched mortars land in #Homs .He said was surveillance drone #Syria

— Paul Danahar (@pdanahar) June 11, 2012

Skyline of old city of #Homs in #Syria today twitter.com/pdanahar/statu…
— Paul Danahar (@pdanahar) June 11, 2012

12.09pm: Helicopter gunships were used to attack Rastan today, AP reports citing the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

"The regime is now using helicopters more after its ground troops suffered major losses," said Rami Abdul-Rahman of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. "Dozens of vehicles have been destroyed or damaged" since the end of May.

Syria's Foreign Ministry spokesman Jihad Makdissi recently said that rebels are now using sophisticated anti-tank missiles.

The Observatory and the Local Coordination Committees also reported government shelling in the central provinces of Homs and Hama, the southern region of Daraa, the northern province of Aleppo, and suburbs of the capital Damascus and Deir Ezzor in the east.

The Modern Tokyo Times argues that updates from the Observatory should be treated with caution:

If the BBC, CNN, AP, Reuters, New York Times, or whoever, desire to be more objective about their sources, then the format should be changed. Instead the public should be informed in each article that the "Syrian Observatory for Human Rights is anti-government and based in England." It also should be stated that "the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights is an amalgamation of anti-Bashar al-Assad individuals which are intent on regime change."

11.46am: Unicef has expressed its outrage at the continuing killing of children in Syria, as video emerged purporting to show the bodies of 10 young children killed in the coastal city of Latakia over the weekend[warning: disturbing content].

Anthony Lake, Unicef's executive director, said:

How many more children need to die? Repeated calls for the protection of children by all parties in Syria have not yielded positive action. But we must voice again our outrage when seeing the murder of innocents, especially children and women, as reportedly the case in al-Qubair village in Hama.

Unicef appeals once more: spare and protect the children who are in no way responsible for the violence and must not be its victims.

The Violation Documentation Centre, a website maintain by activists claims 1,174 children have been killed since the crisis began last March.

11.17am: Video, backed by satellite photographs, has emerged that appear to show a Syrian air base being attacked after a battalion, armed with surface-to-air-missiles, defected to the opposition.

Human Rights Watch has obtained images from DigitalGlobe that show the al-Ghanto base near Rastan in Homs province, burning after the reported attack.

It appears to confirm video footage from activists showing smoke rising from the base.

The soldiers, who defected from the base, joined rebels in nearby Rastan and Talbiseh, according to activists. Rastan was bombarded today according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

After the defection, video emerged purporting to show surface-to-air-missiles in the hands of the rebels.

Peter Bouckaert, emergencies director at Human Rights Watch, said this footage appeared to show SA-2 surface-to-air missiles. He said that in the current context of the fighting in Syria this type of missile does not present the same danger of proliferation as the smaller, shoulder-launched versions, like the SA-7 that was common in Libya. But he added: "It is of course possible that shoulder-launched versions were also present at the base."

Another clip from activists purports to show munitions being carried away from the base.

Bouckaert, who campaigned against the proliferation of weapons in Libya after the fall of Gaddafi, said the clip appeared to show tank shells.

He added:

As these larger bases begin to defect, there is a real danger with the proliferation of sophisticated weapons in Syria. Like Libya, Syria has vast arsenals of dangerous weapons, including sophisticated surface-to-air missiles and anti-tank weapons, as well as large stockpiles of more ordinary weapons such as rocket-propelled grenade launchers (RPGs). If these weapons end up circulating in the wrong hands, they could further destabilize an already unstable region. This is what we saw happening in Libya last year, and it should be a real concern for the international community.

9.49am: Journalists, including the BBC's Paul Danahar and Sky's Tim Marshall, report shelling and gunfire in Homs.

Just waved through first army checkpoint into #Homs without being stopped.

— Paul Danahar (@pdanahar) June 11, 2012

Just heard three loud thumps & burst of machine gunfire in #Homs

— Paul Danahar (@pdanahar) June 11, 2012

Im Homs we hear an explosion approx once every 2 mins. Usually from Khaldia district about a mile away. Occasional gunshots, some closet.

— Tim Marshall (@Skytwitius) June 11, 2012

Danahar gave a graphic account of the aftermath of the massacre in al-Qubair after reaching the town on Friday.

8.48am: (all times BST) Welcome to Middle East Live.

The opposition Syrian National Council claims the regime is on its last legs; activists report an increase in defections, and the Free Syrian Army is said to be gaining ground. Is this all wishful thinking on the part of activists or has a corner been turned in the Syrian crisis?

Here's a roundup of the latest developments:

Syria

• The new opposition leader Abdelbasset Sida has urged officials to defect from a regime he claims is on its last legs. "We are entering a sensitive phase. The regime is on its last legs," he told AFP after being elected leader of the Syrian National Council. "We call upon all officials in the regime and in the institutions to defect from the regime," he told reporters.

• Sida, a Kurdish activist, replaced Burhan Ghalioun who resigned last month after a frontline activist group threatened to leave the council. Critics told the New York Times that he was chosen as a consensus candidate because he represents no one, either inside Syria or out.

Both the Muslim Brotherhood and liberals in the council concluded that he did not pose a threat or provide an advantage to any bloc within the council, but for the same reasons he will have little real authority, and the bickering will continue.

• The rate of defections within the Syrian army is at its highest level, according to activists. Ausama Monajed, a senior member of the Syrian National Council, claims hundreds of soldiers have switched to the opposition in Idlib and Homs, and that a strategic air defence battalion, armed with anti-air and anti-tanks missiles, has announced it is joining the rebels.

• The unravelling of the Assad regime is speeding up, according to Syria watcher Joshua Landis who until now has predicted the government will last longer than most other pundits expected. In his latest post he reckons that recent massacres in Houla and al-Qubair suggest the army is being taken over by shabiha militiamen and that the Sunni middle class, notably in Damascus is beginning to turn against the regime.

Syrians have abandoned the regime in spirit, even if they have yet to defect in body ...

Assad's army is being taken over by shabiha and security forces manned by Alawites. The massacres leave no doubt about that. The shabiha seem able to call in artillery bombardments before sweeping in. They call themselves "Amn al-Assad," Assad's security ...

The revolution is popping up everywhere now. The heart of Damascus is now involved. When the merchants of Hamadiya – the main souq – go on strike, you know you have lost the conscience and heart of Damascus. The Sunni bourgeoisie has now turned on the regime.

• Government forces have renewed their efforts to impose control in Homs province and the Damascus suburbs after a series of attacks by the rebel Free Syrian Army. At least 35 people were killed when the army used artillery, mortars and rockets to hit opposition strongholds in the city of Homs and the towns of Qusair, Talbiseh and Rastan, activists said. In Damascus, government forces bombarded the northern district of Qaboun and later entered it in armoured vehicles, storming houses, after attacks on Friday on buses carrying troops and pro-Assad militia, opposition sources said.

• On Saturday night government tanks opened fire in central Damascus for the first time in the 15-month uprising, according to NBC.

The nearly 12 hours of fighting in Damascus suggested a new boldness among armed rebels, who previously kept a low profile in the capital. It also showed a willingness by the regime to unleash in the capital the sort of elevated force against restive neighbourhoods it has used to crush opponents elsewhere.

"Yesterday was a turning point in the conflict," said Maath al-Shami, an opposition activist in the capital. "There were clashes in Damascus that lasted hours. The battle is in Damascus now."

• An increasingly effective Syrian rebel force has been gaining ground in recent weeks, Liz Sly in the Washington Post reports.

The rebels say they are acquiring access to ammunition and funding that had been in short supply a few months ago, streamlining their structures to improve coordination and steadily eroding the government's capacity to control large swaths of the country.

Libya

• Representatives of the international criminal court have flown to Tripoli to try to secure the release of a detained delegation visiting Saif al-Islam Gaddafi. The four-member delegation was being held in the western mountain town of Zintan after one of its lawyers, Australian Melinda Taylor, was found carrying documents regarded as suspicious.

• Libya's first elections since the fall of Muammar Gaddafi have been put back 18 days, the electoral commission has confirmed. Nuri al-Abbar, head of the electoral commission, said crucial preparations for the election – including voter registration and vetting candidates to make sure they had no links to Muammar Gaddafi – had missed a deadline, making it impossible to hold the vote on the original date of 19 June.

Egypt

• Hosni Mubarak is slipping in and out of consciousness eight days after he was transferred to a prison hospital to serve his life sentence, a security official told AP. Mubarak's wife, Suzanne, and her two daughters-in-law were granted special permission to visit him early on Sunday to quash rumours of his death, the official said at Cairo's Torah prison. Since then Mubarak has had an irregular heartbeat and required assistance in breathing.

Two protection officers injured but British ambassador unhurt after convoy is hit by a rocket-propelled grenade

Two people were injured when a British diplomatic convoy was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade in Benghazi, in the most serious of a spate of assaults on foreign targets in Libya's second city, local security officials said.

An embassy spokeswoman said the British ambassador to Libya was in the convoy but was uninjured. "Two close protection officers were injured but all other staff are safe and uninjured," the spokeswoman said. The injured officers were receiving medical treatment.

The convoy was hit about 300 metres from the British consulate office in the al-Rabha neighbourhood. Police cordoned off the area, and a damaged but still intact car windscreen could be seen lying on the ground.

A source from the government's high security committee said the grenade was fired at the front of the vehicle, blowing out the windscreen.

Another security source said the convoy was leaving a restaurant when the attack happened. "We are looking into who is responsible, an investigation is under way," the source said.

In London, a Foreign Office spokesman confirmed that a British embassy convoy had been attacked in Benghazi. "All staff are accounted for and we are liaising closely with the Libyan authorities," the spokesman said.

Some analysts have blamed attacks in Benghazi on Islamist militants exploiting the security vacuum left after Muammar Gaddafi's overthrow last year. The eastern city was a cradle of the uprising that ended Gaddafi's 42-year rule, but is now a hotspot for violence, with arms readily available and state security forces struggling to assert their authority.

Security experts say the area around the city is host to a number of Islamist militant groups who oppose any western presence in Muslim countries.

Last week an explosive device was dropped from a passing car outside the offices of the US diplomatic mission in Benghazi. The blast that followed slightly damaged the gate in front of the building.

On 22 May a rocket-propelled grenade hit the offices of the International Committee of the Red Cross in the city, blasting a small hole in the building but causing no casualties. A month earlier in Benghazi, a bomb was thrown at a convoy carrying Ian Martin, the head of the United Nations mission in Libya. No one was hurt.

The worst-case scenario for western governments is that the attacks could be the start of an Iraq-style insurgency by Islamist militants. However, analysts say an insurgency is unlikely to gain the kind of momentum it did in Iraq, mainly because western states have no military presence on the ground in Libya.

• UN reports highlights abuse of children in Syria
• Observers alarmed about escalating violence
• Footage shows rebel leader watching troops fire RPGs

• Read the latest summary

5.18pm: Here's a summary of the main events today:

Syria

• UN observers have confirmed that Syrian government forces have been firing from helicopters – apparently a new development (see 5.02pm).

• International envoy Kofi Annan has signalled his intention to push ahead with plans to set up an international contact group on Syria. His spokesman said Annan would ask governments with influence to "twist arms" to enforce the peace plan.

• Colonel Qassim Saadeddine, head of the Free Syrian Army's military council in Homs, has been filmed watching his troops firing RPGs at government positions in the rebel stronghold of Rastan. Last month Saadeddine issued the Assad regime with a 48-hour deadline to abide by the ceasefire (see 12.06pm).

• Britain's foreign secretary William Hague has again said that Britain is not considering military intervention in Syria.

• Children are being maimed, sexually assaulted and used as human shields according to the UN. In its annual report on children and armed conflict [pdf], the UN says children have been the victims of both opposition and the government forces, but most of its criticism concerns forces loyal to President Assad.

Egypt

• The presidential election runoff between the former prime minister Ahmed Shafiq and the Muslim Brotherhood's Mohammed Morsi, due to take place this weekend (16 and 17 June), is in doubt because of legal technicalities over election law, according to the Arabist podcast.

Libya

• A man has been injured in an attack at the offices of the International Committee of the Red Cross in Misrata (see 1.16pm)

Tunisia

• Hundreds of Salafi Islamists angered by an art exhibition which they say insults Muslims have clashed with police in Tunis, raising religious tensions.

5.02pm: Syria: Kofi Annan's spokesman, Ahmad Fawzi, has given a media briefing on Syria in Geneva today. Asked if the government's use of helicopters in attacks is new, he replied:

Yes, if they had been used before, it has not been documented; this time it has been documented. Our observers have videotaped helicopters in the skies with fire coming out of them; so whether [they are] helicopters with machine guns on them, or helicopter gunships … we have not been able to make that distinction yet but yes, they are being used and we have observed them being used.

He was then asked, given the use of helicopters, whether he thought a no-fly zone over Syria would be helpful. He replied:

No fly zone: you know, a ceasefire is a ceasefire, whether it's from the air or the ground. We have been calling for all parties to stop the violence, whether it be from the air or from the ground. And of course, the capacity to use the air is only a government capacity. Therefore we will continue to do so. Declaring a no fly zone is the prerogative of the Security Council, and that hasn't happened yet.

4.17pm: Syria: This is a rare thing - verifiable footage from Syria, courtesy of the UN.

The UN's supervision mission in Syria has taken to YouTube to show what its monitors are seeing. The clips includes shelling over Homs; helicopters overhead; bomb damage in the opposition strongholds of Talbiseh and al-Rastan; and blood stained homes and furious residents.

The clip comes with this commentary:

In Homs where increased and intensified fighting is taking place,smoke drift into the sky from buildings and houses hit by shelling. Next the observers traveled to Talbiseh and al-Rastan,north of Homs city. The roads were empty and all shops, garages, health centers were closed. The bridge on the highway between Talbiseh and al-Rastan appeared shelled.

A Syrian opposition flag - with three stars - draped from the bridge as the smoke and fire continued to burn. UN military observers on patrol to these towns noticed helicopters firing.

There was fresh blood on corridors and outside some of the houses. The UN patrol team spoke with both side - Syrian army soldiers and oppositions free Syrian army - to try and ascertain the extent of this increased heavy weapons and attacks.

3.39pm: Syria: Activists have circulated footage from different locations of what appear to be Russian-made missiles designed to be fired from helicopter gunships.

This footage from Rastan purports to show the spent shells of two types of helicopter missile.

According to Peter Bouckaert, emergencies director at Human Rights Watch, the missile remnants shown are most likely from a Soviet-produced anti-tank missile known as the AT-2, which can be fired from either a helicopter or a ground launcher.

This photograph shows an unspent version mounted on a helicopter.

Bouckaert added: "The longer missile shown is an S-5 rocket fired from helicopter gun pods, and has been previously seen in use in Syria in February."

Similar spent helicopter missile of the longer type feature in this clip from Aleppo today.

The clips cannot be independently verified but appear to back reports by journalists in Syria, and the UN, that helicopter gunships are being used.

Last week (8 June) footage emerged which appeared to show helicopters firing S-5 missiles over Homs.

Bouckaert also highlighted this video footage which appears to confirm the use of 240mm mortars in Homs.

3.20pm: Pro-Assad areas blocked the passage of UN observers trying to reach al-Haffa according to Now Lebanon, citing an activist and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

A local activist told AFP via Skype that residents of As-Sheer, located on the road to Al-Haffe, threw stones at the UN vehicles forcing them to turn back.

"We asked the monitors to tell this to the media, but they said they did not want to," he added.

Syria's ministry of information said terrorists had attacked the offices of a TV channel in Haffa in an attempt to conceal what was going on in the town.

Yesterday state media broadcast what it claimed was a phone call between terrorist planning a massacre in the town.

3.11pm: Syria: UN monitors who had travelled to the north-west town of al-Haffa to investigate reports of clashes in the area deemed it too dangerous to enter, Reuters reports.

It quotes spokeswoman Sausan Ghosheh as saying:

The security situation is not safe for them to enter. They were at the last checkpoint and the government said 'you can go through', but we deemed it unsafe.

Monitors have been filmed in Maarrett Naaman, where photojournalist Nicole Tung witnessed the bodies of nine people killed by army shelling.

2.01pm: Tunisia: Hundreds of Salafi Islamists angered by an art exhibition which they say insults Muslims have clashed with police in Tunis, raising religious tensions in the home of the Arab spring.

Protesters blocked streets and set tyres alight in the working-class Ettadamen and Sidi Hussein districts of the capital overnight. Some hurled petrol bombs at police, in some of the worst confrontations since last year's revolt ousted Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali as president.

An interior ministry official said 86 people had been detained and seven members of the security forces had been wounded as they tried to quell the rioting using teargas and by firing into the air.

Some photos from the controversial exhibition are here.

1.54pm: Libya: Some background to the attack on the ICRC in Misrata (see 1.16pm). There is no indication yet as to who was responsible, but an attack last month at the ICRC headquarters in Benghazi was claimed by a group calling itself the Sheikh Omar Abdul Rahman Brigade.

It is named after an Egyptian known as "the blind sheikh" who is serving a life sentence in the US in connection with the bombing of the World Trade Center in New York in 1993.

On 2 June the group issued a statement accusing the ICRC of Christian evangelistic activities in Libya. According to the Libya Herald, its statement said:

After we made sure that [the ICRC] had distributed Bibles to the displaced people of Tawergha, and had also held preaching lectures, we decided to warn them that we are aware of what they are doing, and that we will defend our religion …

We decided to use an anti-tank shell this time because we only wanted to warn the preachers, and also to ensure the safety of the Muslims who might have been around the area.

The Libya Herald adds that "the group also listed a number of demands to the ICRC, which included removing the sign of the cross from all of their offices in Libya, the removal of all Bibles and the cessation of other supposedly evangelistic activity".

The ICRC's mission statement makes clear that it is "an impartial, neutral and independent organisation" with an "exclusively humanitarian mission".

1.16pm: Libya: A man has been injured in an attack at the offices of the International Committee of the Red Cross in Misrata.

An ICRC spokesman said: "The ICRC confirms that an explosion occurred in our Misrata office at 3.50am on 12 June. The nature of the explosion is still not verified yet, but the authorities were informed and were on site early at five in the morning."

The man who was injured was the son of the owner of the offices, who is living in the compound.

12.54pm: Here's a summary of the main events so far today:

Syria

• International envoy Kofi Annan has signalled his intention to push ahead with plans to set up an international contact group on Syria. His spokesman said Annan would ask governments with influence to "twist arms" to enforce the peace plan.

• Colonel Qassim Saadeddine, head of the Free Syrian Army's military council in Homs, has been filmed watching his troops firing RPGs at government positions in the rebel stronghold of Rastan. Last month Saadeddine issued the Assad regime with a 48-hour deadline to abide by the ceasefire (see 12.06pm).

• More accounts have emerged of Syrian government forces using helicopter gunships against opposition areas. UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon expressed alarm at the use of attack helicopters in Talbiseh and Rastan in Homs province.

• Britain's foreign secretary William Hague has again ruled out military intervention in Syria. "We are not looking for any foreign military intervention. I think we should not think about it in terms of another Libya," he said.

• Children are being maimed, sexually assaulted and used as human shields according to the UN. In its annual report on children and armed conflict [pdf], the UN says children have been the victims of both opposition and the government forces, but most of its criticism concerns forces loyal to President Assad.

Egypt

• The presidential election runoff between the former prime minister Ahmed Shafiq and the Muslim Brotherhood's Mohammed Morsi, due to take place this weekend (16 and 17 June), is in doubt because of legal technicalities over election law, according to the Arabist podcast. The supreme constitutional court is due to rule on Thursday 14 June in two cases. The first could dissolve the new parliament on the grounds that the way MPs were elected was unconstitutional. The second could disqualify Shafiq as a candidate because as a member of the former regime he is prohibited from standing. "Egypt's best legal minds in are confused by this," says Issandr El Amrani.

• Hosni Mubarak's health has deteriorated further, with the ousted Egyptian president slipping in and out of consciousness and being fed liquids intravenously, security officials have said. Doctors had to use a defibrillator twice on the 84-year-old, according to officials at Torah prison hospital, where the former leader is serving a life sentence.

12.32pm: Sky's Tim Marshall heard what he thought was a helicopter gunship firing a missile in an area between Homs and Hama (near Rastan which featured in the clip earlier).

He reported:

On three occasions we saw helicopters above us and heard, but did not see, what we thought was the sound of one firing a missile.

He described "cheek-by-jowl" fighting in the area:

Syrian government troops and opposition fighters are now based so close to each other in some areas, they could shout at one another.

Along a 20-mile stretch of highway leading from Homs to Hama, we saw a trail of destruction interspersed with army and Free Syrian Army units.
The road was completely deserted except for our car and two UN vehicles we were following.

The regular army are in sandbagged bunkers and disused houses backed by armoured personnel carriers and tanks. The FSA are nowhere to be seen, until you stop.

The BBC's Paul Danahar, who is leaving Syria today, reports an interesting briefing on the FSA leadership.

International official told me Gov likely to try to take& hold positions from FSA, which fits with heavy mortaring I saw in #Homs y'day

— Paul Danahar (@pdanahar) June 12, 2012

International official told me FSA still has no unified structure on the ground. Sometimes changes street by street. #Syria

— Paul Danahar (@pdanahar) June 12, 2012

The lack of command structure of FSAis making UN ability to co-ordinate with them harder. #syria

— Paul Danahar (@pdanahar) June 12, 2012

12.06pm: Video footage has emerged purporting to show a senior leader of the Free Syrian Army watching his troops firing automatic weapons and RPGs at government positions in Rastan.

The clip shows Colonel Qassim Saadeddine (in the green camouflage) who last month defied the Turkey-based leader of the FSA by issuing the Assad regime with a 48-hour deadline to abide by the ceasefire. Since that deadline elapsed on 1 June, the FSA has stepped up its attacks on government forces.

Update: Our colleague Mona Mahmood says those talking in the clip claim that the FSA Khalid ben Al-Waleed brigade successfully stopped an attack on Rastan by forces loyal to president Assad.

They claimed that they destroyed an armoured personnel carrier.

11.44am: Kofi Annan is pushing ahead with plans to set up an international contact on Syria, despite objections from the US and UK about the idea of involving Iran in such a group.

AFP quotes Annan's spokesman as saying:

We hope that this contact group meeting will take place soon. The objective of creating this group is to give teeth to the [six point peace] plan, is to convince the parties to implement the plan in its entirety - it's not to create a new plan.

Last week Annan suggested that the group would include the five permanent members of the UN Security Council as well as Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and others. But the US and its western partners firmly oppose membership for Iran, a close Syrian ally.

11.31am: Reuters has more on the besieged town of al-Haffa, north-east of the port of Latakia.

Three fighters contacted by phone said that hundreds of rebels who have joined the 15-month-old uprising against President Bashar al-Assad are fighting a tank and helicopter-backed assault on their district, tucked among rugged mountains near Syria's Mediterranean coast.

International envoy Kofi Annan said on Monday he was worried residents were trapped in Haffa and demanded immediate access for UN observers. The United States warned of a "potential massacre", after two reported mass killings in neighbouring provinces in the past three weeks.

Rebels said they had sent civilians to the outskirts of Haffa when the 8-day siege began, but now those areas were also under fire. They said the army and militia men loyal to Assad had surrounded the area.

"Every few days we manage to open a route to get out the wounded, so some families were able to escape yesterday," said one rebel who called himself Abdulwudud. "We're trying to move the families all out so they can flee to Turkey," about 25 km (15 miles) away.

Clashes started last Tuesday between rebels and security forces who were setting up checkpoints to tighten their grip on the strategic town - it lies close to the port city of Latakia as well as the Turkish border - which has been used by rebels to smuggle people and supplies.

The Sunni Muslim town is in the foothills of the coastal mountains which form the heartland of Assad's minority Alawite sect.

Al-Haffa is marked on this Google Map.

Meanwhile, a spokesman for Annan says the international envoy be could be forced to ask governments with influence to "twist arms" to enforce the peace plan for the country, AP reports.

Ahmad Fawzi told reporters in Geneva on Tuesday that escalating violence in Syria mirrors the spike in fighting that occurred shortly before a ceasefire plan was agreed in April.

10.59am: Syria: Following William Hague's statement yesterday that Britain will "not rule out any option" for Syria, the foreign secretary has insisted today that efforts are focused on trying to reach a peaceful transition, and that foreign military intervention was not being considered, Reuters reports.

"We are not looking for any foreign military intervention. I think we should not think about it in terms of another Libya," he told a news conference in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad.

"The analogy is now more the situation in the Balkans, as it develops now, where we see the regime using heavy weapons against civilian populated areas and then sending in militias to kill and murder people," Hague added.

"All our efforts are going into supporting a peaceful transition in Syria, and a peaceful solution," said Hague, in a joint press conference with Pakistani foreign minister Hina Rabbani Khar. "If there is any violent solution, it would clearly involve many more deaths and a great deal of hardship for the Syrian people."

10.55am: The atmosphere in the Syrian capital is changing after days of violent clashes, according to Lena, a spokeswoman for the Revolution Leadership Council in Damascus.

"Some areas are boiling," she said in a Skype interview, adding "demonstrations are not stopping. The capital is rising now."

Protests are occurring in parts of Damascus for the first time, she claimed.

Lena added:

You can see security forces all over the place, you can see checkpoints. This means the regime is actually scared because the revolution is spreading more and more.

Last night there were clashes in the neighbourhood of Barzeh. Military forces entered Barzeh, they raided homes, they started shelling the houses in order to scare people. When the regular army started the offensive, members of the Free Syrian Army started clashes. The gunfire was very very loud. There were so many explosions. Four martyrs fell and there were tens of wounded people. There were wounded people on the ground, no one could actually help them because there were snipers on building rooftops. After that the regular army forces withdrew, but we believe there might be a new stronger invasion today or later on.

People in the capital are getting used to the sound of gunfire, explosions and the like. Some areas are boiling. The centre of Damascus is a bit more slow, but there you can always sense that something is going on. Something is about to go on, but the security forces are everywhere, so it is hard for activists to move or go out on demonstrations.

The regime is starting to fight harder now in the capital. The end is drawing near so we are anticipating more offensives on their part.

Lena claimed the UN monitors had made no difference to the level of violence. She said:

We believe they are only here to prolong the life of the regime. When they come to the area nothing different happens. The monitors should actually help. We know that the regime is keeping them from doing what they should be doing. But they may not have the will to offer help to the Syrian people.

10.47am: Syria: Today is Russia's national day and Sana, the Syrian government news agency, has an article paying tribute to the warmth of the two countries' relations.

Damascus and Moscow have always called for building a new system of relations at the international policy, based on balance, multiplicity and braking the one-sided polarity.

Based on that, Russia has always announced its support to Syria in the face of western and regional bids that use terror as a way to interfere in its internal affairs in order to impose political agendas that oppose the Syrian people's interests.

That was embodied when Russia vetoed twice at the UN security council against those western powers, preventing them from passing their plots against Syria.

Sana adds that "Russia provides Syria with oil products, chemical and organic materials, minerals, woods, fertilisers, trucks and corn" – though there's no mention of supplying weapons.

10.36am: Libya: More about yesterday's attack on the British embassy convoy in Benghazi. The Libya Herald says:

According to an official spokesman at the interior ministry, Salem Khamaj, the attack began when a lone vehicle approached the convoy and fired on it with a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG), which is understood to have hit one of the two vehicles in the convoy. "Following that, there was an exchange of fire between the assailants and the convoy. Unfortunately the shooters were able to escape", Khamaj said.

Two of the ambassador's close protection officers were injured in the attack, though their injuries are not thought to be life-threatening. The Libya Herald says "one of the men may be at risk of losing an arm after receiving a serious wound to the shoulder".

Although there has been no claim of responsibility, speculation points to a militant group called the Omar Abdul Rahman brigade which attacked the Benghazi headquarters of the International Committee of the Red Cross in May, claiming that the ICRC was "evangelising" and distributing bibles in Libya. The Libya Herald adds:

The brigade also claimed responsibility for a bomb blast that took place outside the gates of the US diplomatic mission in Benghazi on 5 June. That attack took place one day after the assassination of al-Qaida second-in-command Abu Yahya Al-Libi by an American drone strike in Pakistan. Al-Libi was a Libyan national.

Meanwhile, Lindsey Hilsum of Channel 4 News and author of a book on the Libyan revolution, argues that the country's problems will be solved by more democracy.

Until there is an elected government, these problems are likely to multiply. The elections for an assembly to replace the National Transitional Council have been delayed from 19 June to 7 July, but they still provide the best hope that a new government, appointed by the assembly, will be able to assert itself ...

Libya's was the only true revolution of the "Arab Spring", in which the entire apparatus of state was overturned ... The incidents of the last two weeks are a symptom of the resulting power-vacuum, but not necessarily connected. The problem is that everyone with a grievance is turning to violence or protest, not that Libyans share the same grievance against the new authorities.

10.03am: Bahrain: British foreign office minister Alistair Burt visited Bahrain yesterday, meeting the crown prince and ministers, as well as members of the opposition, civil society and the media.

As usual, he urged the regime to press ahead with reforms and "called on all parties to enter into an inclusive and constructive political dialogue". After his visit, Burt said:

Bahrain remains a top priority for the UK government. As a key partner and ally in the region, it is in our interests to support Bahrain on the road to long-term stability.

Yesterday, I visited Bahrain and met with representatives from the government, as well as opposition parties, to hear about progress in implementing political reform in the country. As a close friend of Bahrain, it is our role to support positive steps and to offer constructive help on what still needs to be done.

While the Bahraini government has made some good progress on the recommendations of the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry (BICI), we are clear there is much more to do. Bringing about sustained, comprehensive reform will take time, but the government should build on the steps they have taken and ensure that BICI recommendations are implemented quickly and in full, including where they relate to human rights.

We stand ready to assist Bahrain as it tackles the challenges ahead, including help with reform of the judicial system, promoting human rights training in the police and other government services, and reducing sectarian tension through reconciliation.

As Bahrain moves forward, it is vital that all sides renounce violence unequivocally and engage in an inclusive process of political dialogue to deliver the safe and prosperous future that all the people of Bahrain want and deserve.

Opposition activist Saeed Shehabi remains sceptical. Yesterday he tweeted:

Bahrainis have long washed their hands off Alkhalifa regime. It is unreformable; the only strategy is to confront it head on #Bahrain

— Saeed Shehabi (@SaeedShehabi) June 11, 2012

9.25am: "Children are paying a horrendous price in the military confrontations in Syria," says Jo Becker, children's rights advocacy director at Human Rights Watch, in response to the UN's report.

HRW says children are increasingly victim to Syria's conflict. It highlights the death toll among children compiled by activists at the Syria Violations Documentation Centre. To underline the point, its tally has since risen from 1,176 to 1,183 (screengrab pictured) since HRW published its press release.

9.13am: Qatar: Human Rights Watch has called on Qatar to reform its labour laws before construction work starts for the 2022 World Cup.

"The government needs to ensure that the cutting edge, high-tech stadiums it's planning to build for World Cup fans are not built on the backs of abused and exploited workers," Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch said.

The New York-based organisation has published a report today which includes interviews with 73 migrant construction workers. Qatar has the world's highest ratio of migrants to citizens: 94% of its workforce are migrants.

HRW says Qatar's recruitment and employment system in effect traps many migrant workers in their jobs.

Qatar has one of the most restrictive sponsorship laws in the Gulf region, as workers cannot change jobs without their employer's permission, regardless of whether they have worked two years or 20, and all workers must get their sponsoring employer to sign an "exit permit" before they can leave the country ...

Qatari laws also prohibit migrant workers from unionising or striking, though the International Labour Organisation identifies free association as a core labour right.

8.45am: The office of UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon [pictured] has expressed alarm about the use of helicopter gunships by the Syrian government, but has also criticised the opposition's role in the recent increase in the violence.

A statement issued by his office said:

United Nations observers from the supervision mission in Syria have reported an increased level of armed confrontation between government and opposition forces. The government's intensive military operations, including the shelling of Homs and reportedly other population centres, as well as firing from helicopters on Talbiseh and Rastan, are resulting in heavy civilian casualties and human rights violations. The secretary-general underlines the importance of unimpeded access by Unsmis to Al-Haffa, amid reports of a build-up of government forces around the town.

In this context, Unsmis is also observing planned and coordinated attacks on government forces and civilian infrastructure in multiple locations. The violence as a whole is intensifying amid the shifting tactics.

The secretary-general condemns this escalation of armed violence, in particular the shelling of population centres and attacks against civilian infrastructure by all sides, which impairs delivery of essential services and exacerbates the humanitarian crisis. The secretary-general further calls on all sides to stop the killing, cease armed violence in all its forms and seek peaceful political means to resolve the deepening crisis, as called for by the
six-point plan. The parties must abide by their obligations under international law.

One contact of Syria watcher Joshua Landis highlights the plight of people in Talbiseh, one of the towns mentioned in Ban's statement.

He said:

My home town Talbiseh has been under heavy bombardment and shelling by mortars, missiles,and military aircraft for over three days. About 20 have been killed, many many injured, crops burned, houses destroyed. People including my family are fleeing the town and sleeping in open farms, under trees, in dry irrigation canals.

8.23am: (all times BST) Welcome to Middle East Live.

Here's a roundup of the latest developments:

Syria

• Children are being maimed, sexually assaulted and used as human shields according to the UN. In its annual report on children and armed conflict [pdf], the UN says children have been the victims of both opposition and the government forces, but most of its criticism concerns forces loyal to President Assad. It said:

In almost all recorded cases, children were among the victims of military operations by government forces, including the Syrian Armed Forces, the intelligence forces and the Shabbiha militia, in their ongoing conflict with the opposition, including the Free Syrian Army. Children as young as nine years of age were victims of killing and maiming, arbitrary arrest, detention, torture and ill-treatment, including sexual violence, and use as human shields. Schools have been regularly raided and used as military bases and detention centres.

Interviews with former members of the Syrian armed forces and the intelligence forces indicated that civilians, including children, were targeted by government forces if they were residing in villages where members of FSA or other armed opposition groups were believed to be present or where deserters were hiding, or if they were seen fleeing the country seeking refuge. In one instance, a former member of the Syrian Armed Forces stated that, during protests in Tall Kalakh in December 2011, he was given an order by his commander to shoot without distinction, although the soldiers were aware that there were women and children among the protesters. During the armed break-up of the demonstrations, the witness saw three girls between approximately 10 and 13 years of age who had been killed by the Syrian Armed Forces. In another similar incident in Aleppo in the fourth quarter of 2011, a former member of the intelligence forces witnessed the killing of five children in a secondary school during demonstrations.

The Syrian armed forces and its associated Shabbiha militia used children as young as 8 years on at least three separate occasions within the reporting period ... In the village of Ayn l'Arouz in March 2012, a witness stated that several dozen children, boys and girls ranging between the ages of 8 and 13 years, were forcibly taken from their homes. These children were subsequently reportedly used by soldiers and militia members as human shields, placing them in front of the windows of buses carrying military personnel into the raid on the village.

• The UN observers reported an escalation in violence across Syria and expressed alarm about civilians trapped in besieged rebel strongholds in the central city of Homs and northwestern village of Al Heffa, the New York Times reports.

Ceasefire monitors reported artillery shelling and machine-gun fire in the Khaldiyeh section of Homs as well as the towns of Rastan and Talbiseh, to the north. The monitors also reported the military's use of helicopter gunships – a relatively new tactic employed by the Syrian Army, first observed by antigovernment activists in attacks on armed rebels around the major port of Latakia a week ago. The helicopter attacks are regarded as a significant escalation by the government side in the conflict.

• Britain has for the first time raised the spectre of al-Qaida operating in Syria, while at the same time accusing Damascus of brutally targeting specific communities and driving Syrians to take up arms. "We … have reason to believe that terrorist groups affiliated to al-Qaida have committed attacks designed to exacerbate the violence, with serious implications for international security," said Hague in a speech to the Commons. He offered no details.

Libya

• Two people were injured when a British diplomatic convoy was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade in Benghazi, in the most serious of a spate of assaults on foreign targets in Libya's second city. Security experts say the area around the city is host to a number of Islamist militant groups who oppose any western presence in Muslim countries.

• A legal team from the international criminal court has reportedly been jailed in Libya after being detained over a visit to Muammar Gaddafi's imprisoned son Saif al-Islam. The four-strong team was moved to a jail in the mountain town of Zintan, a militia brigade chief told the BBC.

Egypt

• The presidential election runoff between the former prime minister Ahmed Shafiq and the Muslim Brotherhood's Mohammed Morsi, due to take place this weekend (16 and 17 June), is in doubt because of legal technicalities over election law, according to the Arabist podcast. The supreme constitutional court is due to rule on Thursday 14 June in two cases.

The first could dissolve the new parliament on the grounds that the way MPs were elected was unconstitutional. The second could disqualify Shafiq as a candidate because as a member of the former regime he is prohibited from standing. "Egypt's best legal minds in are confused by this," says Issandr El Amrani.

• Despite repeatedly yielding to the generals, the judiciary could be on the verge of a game-changing decision according to Mara Revkin. Writing in Foreign Policy she says:

The judiciary has already been put on the defensive by widespread criticism of the verdicts in the trials of Hosni Mubarak and other former regime officials, viewed as too lenient by many Egyptians. A decision upholding Ahmed Shafiq's candidacy – by striking down a disenfranchisement law that would bar former regime members from running for office – would take a toll on the judiciary's already vulnerable reputation, something the SCC justices have a strong self-interest in preventing .... If it comes down to a choice between defending the interests of the SCAF and former regime or protecting its own reputation, the judiciary – like any self-serving political actor – will save itself.

• Hosni Mubarak's health has deteriorated further, with the ousted Egyptian president slipping in and out of consciousness and being fed liquids intravenously, security officials have said. Doctors had to use a defibrillator twice on the 84-year-old, according to officials at Torah prison hospital, where the former leader is serving a life sentence.

Bahrain

• An 11-year-old boy is to stand trial in Bahrain, accused of taking part in an illegal gathering and blocking a road, after spending a month in prison following the kingdom's crackdown on dissent, the Independent reports. Ali Hasan who was freed yesterday pending his trial later this month, was detained on 14 May near his home in al-Bilad al-Qadeem, a suburb of the Bahraini capital, Manama.

Libyan dictator always had an eye for the camera, whether it was posing with world leaders or harking back to his Bedouin roots

Muammar Gaddafi ruled Libya for 42 years before he was overthrown last summer and killed by rebels in October. So it will take some time before his countrymen are able to escape his giant shadow. Even as a young man – he was 27 in 1969 when he and his fellow officers overthrew the western-backed King Idris – Gaddafi had an eye for the camera and for posterity.

Archives seized after the revolution contain a rich photographic record of his poses, achievements and friends, though his hugs of welcome for fellow Arab leaders from Yasser Arafat to Egypt's President Gamal Abdel-Nasser, his hero and inspiration, often masked stormy private relationships.

Gaddafi's penchant for elaborate military uniforms and powerful allies is combined in a shot of him standing hand-in-hand with the ageing Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev in 1981, at the start of a decade which saw Libyan backing for the IRA and other terrorists, retaliatory US air attacks on Libya as well as the notorious Lockerbie bombing. Years of sanctions followed until Gaddafi finally came in from the cold and shed his pariah status for a brief honeymoon before the Arab spring erupted.

Images found by Human Rights Watch in state intelligence buildings and Gaddafi family residences make up a unique archive of the years when the Jamahiriya or "state of the masses" was run according to the precepts of the "Brother Leader's'' Green Book, and was effectively closed to the west.

Gaddafi often harked back to his Bedouin roots – receiving visitors in a tent pitched inside his Bab al-Aziziyah compound in Tripoli before the Nato-backed revolution ended his control of the capital.

In one undated picture he lies sprawled happily and barefoot on the sand, foreshadowing the unmarked desert grave he was buried in last October after being killed by rebel fighters on the outskirts of his home town Sirte.His rotting corpse was left on display in a meat store for three days in a grotesque parody of a conventional lying-in-state for a mourned national leader.

Hatred and vengeance were the products of decades of the repression that was an important part of Gaddafi's Libya. One grim shot in this exhibition shows bodies dangling from makeshift gallows in a Benghazi sports stadium – the result of one of his periodic "revolutionary" show trials of the dissidents he hunted down without mercy at home and abroad.

The Gaddafi Archives: Libya Before the Arab Spring London Festival of Photography

The Gaddafi Archives: Libya Before the Arab Spring is part of the London festival of photography

• Clinton says Russia is dramatically escalating the conflict
• Crisis has reached civil war says UN peacekeeping chief
• Rebels flee al-Haffa after monitors blocked
• Tunisia's ex-dictator Ben Ali given 20-year sentence

• Read the latest summary

4.55pm: Here's a summary of the latest developments:

Syria

• Both the Syrian government and opposition activists have disputed an assertion by the UN's peacekeeping chief that the Syrian conflict has descended into a civil war. Activists said the term "civil war" suggests an equivalence between the two sides and ignores massacres committed by the regime. The Syrian foreign ministry said: "Talk of civil war in Syria is not consistent with reality ... What is happening in Syria is a war against armed groups that choose terrorism."

• Future humanitarian aid missions in Syria are in doubt following today's attack on an aid convoy which injured three workers near Idlib, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has warned (see 4.01pm).

• British foreign secretary William Hague told reporters he will be meeting Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov in an effort to persuade Russia to use its influence with Syria to implement Kofi Annan's tattered peace plan (see 3.48pm). Meanwhile, French foreign minister Laurent Fabius has said a no-fly zone should be an option under discussion.

• The Syrian foreign ministry has invited UN monitors to inspect al-Haffa now that it has been "cleared" of terrorists. Yesterday the monitors were chased away by Assad's supporters; now they are being asked to return by the foreign ministry (see 2.18pm).

• US secretary of state Hillary Clinton said Russia was shipping attack helicopters to the Assad regime and lying about weapons deliveries. Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov hit back, accusing the US of supplying the rebels with weapons (see 2.03pm).

• Turkey is witnessing a sharp increase in Syrian refugees after rebels fled the besieged town of al-Haffa near its southern border.A foreign ministry official claimed that 2,000 Syrians had fled in the last 48-hours (see 11.29am).

Tunisia

• A Tunisian military court has sentenced the ousted dictator Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali to 20 years in jail in his absence for inciting violence during a police attempt to smuggle his nephew out of the country during last year's revolt. Saudi Arabia, where Ben Ali fled to, is not expected to extradite him.

Egypt

• Hosni Mubarak fears doctors are trying to kill him, according to his lawyer. Farid el-Deeb quoted his client as as saying: "I'm uncomfortable and I don't feel safe. I feel they are ordered to kill me."

4.01pm: Future humanitarian aid missions in Syria are in doubt following today's attack on an aid convoy which injured three workers near Idlib, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has warned.

Following the attack (see 3.30pm), a spokesman said:

This kind of incident is completely unacceptable. It comes at a moment when the ICRC and the Syrian Arab Red Crescent (SARC) are the only organisations able to deliver assistance on the ground, despite the increasing security problems.

This incident may put at risk the only humanitarian action taking place in the country at a moment when the needs are steadily increasing.

The ICRC and the SARC take such incidents extremely seriously. We will continue our work but we will have to review the situation on the ground accordingly. The safety of the ICRC and SARC teams is vital for us to be able to continue to help those in need.

3.48pm: More diplomatic huffing and puffing on Syria.

William Hague told reporters in Kabul that "Syria is on the edge of a collapse or of a deadly sectarian civil war," and that he will be holding another meeting with Lavrov to try to persuade Russia to use its influence with Syria to implement Kofi Annan's tattered peace plan.

Hague said he will hold talks with Lavrov on the sidelines of today's conference on Afghanistan.

Meanwhile, Reuters quotes French foreign minister Laurent Fabius saying that a no-fly zone should be an option under discussion.

He said: "We propose making the implementation of the Annan plan compulsory. We need to pass to the next speed at the Security Council and place the Annan plan under Chapter 7 - that is to say make it compulsory under pain of very heavy sanctions."

France would propose toughening sanctions on Syria at the next meeting of EU foreign ministers, he said.

He said the international community would prepare a list of second-ranking military officials who would be pursued by international justice, alongside President Bashar al-Assad and his immediate entourage.

"They must understand that the only future is in resisting oppression. The time for taking a decision has arrived. They have to jump ship," Fabius said

.

3.34pm: Oman: Twenty-two peaceful protesters and nine online activists and writers have been arrested so far this month, Human Rights Watch says.

Most of the arrests followed a statement by Muscat's public prosecutor on 4 June, threatening to take "all appropriate legal measures" against activists who have made "inciting calls … under the pretext of freedom of expression".

"Omani activists are speaking out about broken promises for government reform," said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. "Instead of listening, Omani authorities are arresting and prosecuting them to silence them."

Oman's autocratic ruler. Sultan Qaboos (pictured), was installed through a British-orchestrated coup in 1970.

3.30pm: The International Committee of the Red Cross says three aid workers suffered minor injuries in Syria when an explosion hit their convoy, AP reports.

The group says the two Syrian Arab Red Crescent volunteers and one ICRC staff member were travelling with other aid workers from Aleppo to Idlib when the blast hit their marked vehicles Wednesday.

A spokesman for the ICRC in Geneva says the aid workers were taken to a medical facility and that their injuries are minor.

Hicham Hassan told The Associated Press that it is the first time Red Cross staffers have been injured since the start of violence in Syria last year.

He says the ICRC doesn't know if it was targeted in the explosion or who was responsible for it.

Meanwhile, the UN's humanitarian chief Valerie Amos, has expressed alarm about the continuing violence.

I'm very worried about the violence in #Syria and its effect on people - trying to get more help in asap.

— Valerie Amos (@ValerieAmos) June 13, 2012

2.55pm: The French foreign minister has backed Ladsous's assessment that Syria has descended into civil war, according to breaking wire reports.

"If you can't call it a civil war, then there are no words to describe it," he told reporters.

Reuters quoted Laurent Fabius also expressing hope that Russia will support chapter seven action at the UN security council, which could lead to the use of military force in Syria.

The prospect of that appears to be extremely remote.

RIA Novosti quotes more of foreign minister Sergei Lavrov's retaliation against US accusation that Russia is escalating the conflict.

It quoted him saying:

We are not delivering to Syria, or anywhere else, items that could be used against peaceful demonstrators. In this we differ from the United States, which regularly delivers riot control equipment to the region, including a recent delivery to a Persian Gulf country. But for some reason the Americans consider this to be fine.

2.52pm: "We're going to war with Syria," says Michael Tomasky in the Daily Beast – though perhaps not just yet. Referring to the Hama massacre of 1982 where thousands died, he writes:

I don't believe that we live in a world anymore where a Hama can happen and the western powers do nothing. More than 14,000 have died in Syria so far, says the anti-government Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

The difference between that and Hama is that the current slaughter is happening slowly. But one of these days, and perhaps wth the aid of Russian attack helicopters, the regime will really cut loose. And the west will have to do ... something.

Tomasky goes on to say that "some version of war is looking more and more inevitable to me". He doesn't expect it to happen before the US presidential election, "but get ready for the march to Damascus, or at least bombs over Damascus, in 2013".

2.44pm: Photojournalist Nicole Tung's graphic account and photo essay on the victims of shelling in Maarret Naaman, in Idlib province, has been published in Time.

Tung, who gave the Guardian an audio of account of what she saw earlier this week, wrote:

The shelling momentarily ceased. It was now 1 am as we arrived at a mosque where locals had placed six of the dead in white sheets. The main hospital was under the control of the army, and there was no refrigeration or city morgue. The mortars had reduced the contents of the sheets to nothing but piles of civilian, human flesh—unrecognisable except for a single hand and one somewhat intact body.

I looked for a minute, began photographing, and then felt my stomach turn. The bodies were covered in chalk and large blocks of ice and water bottles were placed between the limbs. "They were just coming out of the mosque after evening prayers," one local man screamed. "And that's when the mortars killed them." Even in the darkness of the mosque, streaks of blood could be seen, almost as if a giant red paint brush had been run across the floor.

2.18pm: The Syrian foreign ministry has invited UN monitors to inspect al-Haffa now that its been "cleared" of terrorists.

Yesterday the monitors were chased away by Assad's supporters, now they are being asked to return by the foreign ministry.

The state news agency Sana quotes an official calling on the observers to go an inspect the damage done by terrorists in the town.

It said:

Authorities have restored security and clam to al-Haffeh district after clearing it from the armed terrorist groups which terrorized citizens and sabotaged several public and private properties.

The authorities also seized huge amounts of advanced weapons used by armed terrorist groups, including sniper rifles, explosive devices, RPG launchers and a large amount of ammunition.

2.03pm: Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov has hit back at his US counterpart Hillary Clinton by accusing the US of supplying the rebels with weapons.

Speaking at a news conference in Iran he said Russian arms contracts to Syria were not violating any international law.

He added: "They (the United States) are providing arms and weapons to the Syrian opposition that can be used in fighting against the Damascus government."

Cartoonist Carlos Latuff depicts the Syrian conflict as a proxy war between US and Russia.

#Cartoon for @Operamundi – #Syria, the Apotheosis of Barbarism twitpic.com/9vmfm5

— Carlos Latuff (@CarlosLatuff) June 12, 2012

1.21pm: The UN's supervision mission in Syria has broadcast footage of its bullet-riddled vehicles that were shot at after a team of monitors was prevented from visiting the besieged town of al-Haffa.

The cars were fired at three times, spokeswoman Sausan Ghoshen said in the clip.

The footage came with this commentary:

The vehicles of United Nations military observers were stoned and hit my metal rods by angry crowd as they were trying to reach al-Haffa on 12 June. The UN observers turned back. As they were leaving the area, three vehicles heading towards Idlib were fired upon. The source of fire is still unclear. The UN observers have been trying to enter al-Haffa since 7 June.

Government forces have since taken control of the al-Haffa after rebels fled the town overnight.

Footage of pro-Assad supporters attacking the UN's convoy has also emerged (see 11.02am).

12.59pm: Egypt: The condition of Hosni Mubarak has shown a "slight" improvement though he is refusing prison food, AP reports citing security officials.

The officials at Torah prison where the ex-president is serving his life sentence say he ate yogurt and drank juice today and is being given liquids and vitamins intravenously.

12.49pm: Bahrain: Information affairs minister Samira Rajab has called for "tough new laws to combat the misuse of social media" in order to "guarantee the safety of the state and residents", the Gulf Daily News reports.

Blaming unrest in Bahrain on "irresponsible use of such media", she said:

We have a right to punish those who indulge in seditious behaviour and create disunity among the people.

We have to think of how to protect our national security. We have these new threats and we have to see how we can tackle those threats.

Ms Rajab, who was appointed a minister earlier this year, previously supported the armed insurgency in Iraq (according to a WikiLeaks document) and described Saddam Hussain as a "freedom fighter" and a martyr.

12.39pm: Syrian state TV has confirmed that government forces have taken control of al-Haffa in north west Syria, after rebels fled the town overnight.

The state broadcaster used ominous language, according to Reuters.

Syrian forces have cleared "terrorist" fighters from the town of Haffeh, state television said on Wednesday, after a week of heavy fighting which led the United States to warn of a potential massacre.

Syrian television said the forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad had restored calm and security in al-Haffa after they "cleansed it of armed terrorist groups", a term authorities use to describe rebels fighting Assad.

The rebels said on Tuesday they had withdrawn from al-Haffa under pressure of heavy bombardment.

12.28pm: Is Syria in a state of civil war or not? asks Ian Black.

The statement by Herve Ladsous, the UN's head of peacekeeping operations that it is has been rejected out of hand by both the opposition and the government - casting interesting light on how they perceive a conflict which everyone agrees is escalating.

The Syrian Revolution General Commission, an opposition body, has complained that the widely-reported comments by the UN's Herve Ladsous "does not reflect the reality and does not represent the Syrian people."

The announcement, it said, "makes the killer and the victim equal and ignores all the massacres committed by the Assad regime." It also masked "the real demands of the Syrian people who are only asking for freedom and dignity."

There was agreement, for different reasons, from the foreign ministry in Damascus: the remarks by Ladsous, it said, "did not reflect the reality" of what it happening in Syria. That is "war against armed groups that have chosen terrorism."

The war of words continues.

Here are some more views on the issue from activists and commentators.

If we are afraid of a civil war we can't continue kidding ourselves.

— BSyria (@BSyria) June 13, 2012

@hhassan140 The regime tries hard to project normalcy & feign legitimacy & inclusiveness. The "civil war" narrative runs contrary to that.

— Fadi Mqayed ★★★ (@DSyrer) June 13, 2012

"@AnonymousSyria: Unless the opposition kills civilians from the other side systematically, it's not a civil war. #Syria"

— zain (@ZainSyr) June 13, 2012

@pdanahar an important victory in the 'propaganda war' for the regime is to portray Syrian revolution as a sectarian civil war.

— Nadim Shehadi (@Confusezeus) June 13, 2012

12.00pm: Here's a summary of the latest developments:

Syria

• Both the Syrian government and opposition activists have disputed an assertion by the UN's peacekeeping chief that the Syrian conflict has descended into a civil war. Activists said the term 'civil war' suggests an equivalence between the two sides and ignores massacres committed by the regime. The Syrian foreign ministry said: "Talk of civil war in Syria is not consistent with reality... What is happening in Syria is a war against armed groups that choose terrorism."

• Turkey is witnessing a sharp increase in Syrian refugees after rebels fled the besieged town of al-Haffa near its southern border. A foreign ministry official claimed that 2,000 Syrians had fled in the last 48-hours and a minister expressed alarm about the conflict spreading across the border (see 11.29am).

• US secretary of state Hillary Clinton said Russia was shipping attack helicopters to the Assad regime and lying about weapons deliveries. Russia's state-controlled arms trader claims its deliveries to Syria are in line with international regulations and that it plans to continue shipments. Russia is also printing new bank notes for the ailing Syrian economy, bankers told Reuters.

• Syrian rebels are being armed by Saudi Arabia and Qatar, with the implicit support of Turkey's intelligence agency, a unnamed diplomat told the Independent. "There are arms coming in with the knowledge of the Turks," he said. The Syrian National Council, the main umbrella organisation of groups opposed to the regime, vetted the consignment.

Tunisia

• A Tunisian military court has sentenced the ousted dictator Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali to 20 years in jail in his absence for inciting violence during a police attempt to smuggle his nephew out of the country during last year's revolt. Saudi Arabia, where Ben Ali fled to, is not expected to extradite him.

Egypt

• Hosni Mubarak fears doctors are trying to kill him, according to his lawyer. Farid el-Deeb quoted his client as as saying: "I'm uncomfortable and I don't feel safe. I feel they are ordered to kill me."

11.50am: Syria: Opposition activists and the Syrian government agree on one thing - that the the current crisis is not a civil war.

The Syrian Revolution General Commission issued this statement, after UN peace keeping chief Herve Ladsous agreed that the conflict had descended into a civil war. It said:

The announcement made by the head of the UN monitors today, that Syria has entered in a civil war situation, does not reflect the reality and does not represent the Syrian people. The Syrian people are persevering and remain persistent as they still head down to the streets across Syria, in large numbers, struggling for freedom.

This announcement makes the killer and the victim equal and ignores all the massacres committed by the Assad regime. In addition it wipes out and covers the real demands of the Syrian people who are only asking for freedom and dignity.

We again assure all that our peaceful revolution and our self-defense will continue until we topple the oppressive and barbaric regime.

We will build a new Syria for all, under one banner, uniting all the Syrian people.

11.29am: Turkey is witnessing a sharp increase in refugees after rebels fled the besieged town of al-Haffa near its southern border.

A foreign ministry official claimed that 2,000 Syrians had fled in the last 48-hours.

Some 2,000 Syrian refugees fleeing violence in Syria have crossed into Turkey in last 48 hours-Turkish Foreign Ministry official says #syria

— AlertNet (@AlertNet) June 13, 2012

Earlier deputy foreign minister Naci Koru expressed alarm at the prospect of the crisis spilling over Turkey's borders.

The Turkish daily Hurriyet quoted him saying: "we are disturbed by the possibility that it could spread to us."

It said more than 29,000 Syrians had fled to Turkey since the crisis began.

A Turkish journalist reporting from Hatay, where refugee camps are based, tweeted:

More than 1000 Syrian refugees are entering Turkey right now, some are injured

— Fixer, Syrian border (@Fixer_Turkey) June 13, 2012

11.21am: Syria: Following the remark from Herve Ladsous, head of the UN's department of peacekeeping operations, that Syria is in a state of civil war, the foreign ministry in Damascus has retorted that it is "unrealistic" to describe the conflict as a civil war.

Meanwhile, the government news agency says a ministry official has accused the US of "blatant interference in the internal affairs of Syria ... open support for terrorists, covering up terrorists' crimes, distorting facts about Syria at the UN, and extorting countries and the international community to beleaguer Syria." The report continues:

The source said that this was made clear in recent escalatory statements within the past few days which coincided with an escalation carried out by terrorists across Syria who murdered scores of innocents, with the most malicious of these statements being the one made by a spokesperson of the US Department of State in 11/6/2012 in which she voiced her country's concern over the situation in several Syrian cities.

In these statements, the spokesperson voiced concern over the possibility of a new massacre taking place in al-Haffeh, and the source noted that this is actually cause for concern over the possibility of armed groups committing such a massacre as indicated by phone calls between armed groups and their leaderships in Turkey.

11.02am: Rebel fighters who fled the north-western town of al-Haffa claim government forces pounded opposition positions with tanks and helicopters.

Reuters reports:

"First, helicopters attack the villages, later the tanks attack, and then at the end soldiers enter the houses, loot them and set fire to them," said Mohammad, a 25-year-old fighter who had been shot through the shoulder.

At least 50 wounded have been smuggled across the border to Turkey from al-Haffa over the past few days but many more are trapped by fierce fighting and those that try to escape are fired on by President Bashar al-Assad's forces, according to rebels in the southern Turkish province of Hatay.

Fayez, another rebel, said: "About 40-50 wounded people have been brought across in the last few days but many more we had to leave there. One woman was wounded and had to be carried for three days. She is now in a hospital in Turkey.

"It's becoming really difficult to move the wounded across."

Video has also emerged showing Assad supporters preventing UN monitors from reaching al-Haffa on Tuesday.

A spokeswoman for the UN supervision mission in Syria said the monitors were fired after they withdrew.

10.54am: Syria: Russia is not only supplying Syria with helicopters but also new bank notes as the Assad regime's economic deficit grows.

Reuters reports:

Four Damascus-based bankers told Reuters that new banknotes printed in Russia were circulating in trial amounts in the capital and Aleppo, the first such step since a popular revolt against President Bashar al-Assad began in 2011.

The four bankers said the new notes were being used not just to replace worn out currency but to ensure that salaries and other government expenses were paid, a step economists say could increase inflation and worsen the economic crisis.

The four bankers, along with one business leader in touch with officials, said the new money had been printed in Russia, although they were not able to give the name of the firm that printed it. Two of the bankers said they had spoken to officials recently returned from Moscow where the issue was discussed.

"(The Russians) sent sample new banknotes that were approved and the first order has been delivered. I understand some new banknotes have been injected into the market," said one of the bankers.

10.50am: Tunisia: A military court today sentenced ousted dictator Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali to 20 years in jail in absentia for inciting violence during a police attempt to smuggle his nephew out of the country during last year's revolt.

Ben Ali, who fled to Saudi Arabia, has already been sentenced to decades in jail – also in absentia – on charges ranging from corruption to torture and faces more charges, Reuters reports.

Last month, a Tunisian military prosecutor demanded that the death penalty be imposed on the former strongman for his role in the deaths of protesters in the towns where the Arab Spring began last year.

There is, however, little indication that Riyadh would be willing to extradite Ben Ali.

No senior officials have so far been convicted for the deaths of more than 300 people in last year's uprising, angering the families of the dead and raising pressure on the Tunisian government to ensure that justice is done.

Tunisia's government has faced persistent criticism over its failure to persuade Saudi Arabia to hand over Ben Ali and his wife Leila Trabelsi, a former hairdresser whose lavish lifestyle and clique of wealthy relatives came to be seen by many Tunisians as a symbol of the corrupt era.

10.43am: Rebel fighters have pulled out of the besieged town of al-Haffa in north-west Syria, Beirut's Daily Star reports citing the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

The rebel fighters fled the villages of Zanqufa, Dafil and Bakkas under the cover of night, said Rami Abdul-Rahman, of the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, citing a network of activists on the ground.

The withdrawal suggested the regime was poised to retake Haffa, which has been shelled fiercely for days as have nearby villages in the coastal, mountainous province of Latakia. The shelling killed members of two families who had huddled into a house for shelter earlier this week.

It is not possible to verify the claim. Yesterday the Observatory said UN observers were prevented from reaching al-Haffa. This was later confirmed by the UN supervision mission.

10.26am: Libya: The Guardian has published a selection of photographs seized from Muammar Gaddafi's archives.

The images are a sample of an exhibition at the London Festival of Photography.

The archives contain a rich photographic record of Gaddafi's poses, achievements and friends, writes Ian Black. But his hugs of welcome for fellow Arab leaders from Yasser Arafat to Egypt's President Gamal Abdel-Nasser, his hero and inspiration, often masked stormy private relationships.

Gaddafi's penchant for elaborate military uniforms and powerful allies is combined in a shot of him standing hand-in-hand with the ageing Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev in 1981, at the start of a decade which saw Libyan backing for the IRA and other terrorists, retaliatory US air attacks on Libya as well as the notorious Lockerbie bombing. Years of sanctions followed until Gaddafi finally came in from the cold and shed his pariah status for a brief honeymoon before the Arab spring erupted.

10.20am: Egypt: Ex-president Hosni Mubarak fears doctors are trying to kill him, according to his lawyer. The 84-year-old former dictator has been in a prison hospital since receiving a life sentence on 2 June. Before sentencing he had been detained in a military hospital which some reports described as luxurious.

Speaking on TV, lawyer Farid el-Deeb said he had asked the authorities to transfer Mubarak back to a military hospital because of his fragile health, AP reports.

El-Deeb painted a picture of a paranoid man who does not trust the medical team in the prison and who has at times resisted their instructions ...

"Mubarak doesn't trust anyone anymore. He was surprised to find new doctors treating him, not the ones who treated him before, and is afraid to take anything from anyone. He doesn't recognise the faces around him. This is a big problem for him," el-Deeb said.

At one point, Mubarak told his lawyer that he fears his doctors are out to kill him.

"'Help me Farid,' he said in a very faint voice," el-Deeb quoted Mubarak as saying. "He said: 'I'm uncomfortable and I don't feel safe. I feel they are ordered to kill me'."

An article in the New York Times discusses the conflicting reports about Mubarak's health and the politics behind them. Many people, it says, assume the military-led government is doling out sympathetic details in order to manipulate public opinion.

10.02am: Russia's state-controlled arms trader claims its deliveries to Syria are in line with international regulations and that it plans to continue shipments.

The Russian news agency RIA Novosti quoted Igor Sevastyanov, the deputy head of Rosoboronexport, as saying: "No one can ever accuse Russia of violating the rules of armaments trade set by the international community."

Asked about mobile gun and missile air defence system he added: "The contract was signed long ago and we supply armaments that are self-defence rather than attack weapons, and there can be no talk about any violations by Russia or Rosoboronexport either de jure or de facto."

Sevastyanov did not specifically mention attack helicopters.

9.56am: Libya: There was heavy fighting around the town of Mizdah yesterday between forces from Zintan and members of the Mashasha tribe, the Libya Herald reports. At least 19 people are said to have died.

There has been growing hostility in recent months between the Zintanis who played a prominent role in last year's revolution and the Mashasha who did not support it. Last December, there were clashes in which four people died.

The present fight started yesterday when the Mashasha stopped a Zintan military contingent heading to Sebha at a makeshift road block near Mizdah. In the ensuing conflict, one Zintani, who has been named as Muftah Ibrahim Al-Ramah, was shot dead and two others injured. They were taken to the local government hospital in Mizdah.

Both sides then started to gather their forces and look for allies. The Mizdah and the Al-Qantrar tribes came out in support of Zintan while Twarghans from Hun and elsewhere are said to have driven over to support the Mashasha.

9.55am: Libya: The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) says it has no information at this stage linking yesterday's attack on its office in Misrata to the incident in Benghazi on 22 May, when a group of Islamists justified an attack on its premises by claiming that the ICRC is a Christian organisation that has been distributing bibles in Libya.

One man was injured by the pre-dawn explosion in Misrata – the son of the owner of the offices, who lives in the compound.

Yesterday, the ICRC issued a statement explaining the nature of its activities in Libya:

Upon the request of the Libyan authorities, the ICRC is focusing its activities on the fate of missing persons, visiting detainees and promotion of international humanitarian law ...

We would like to stress that the ICRC is a strictly neutral, impartial and independent humanitarian organisation. It is not involved at all in any kind of politics or religion.

The ICRC is the founding body of the worldwide Red Cross Red Crescent movement. In Libya it works in close partnership with the Libyan Red Crescent Society. Currently, about 70% of the ICRC operations worldwide are in Muslim countries ...

The ICRC is not a religious organisation. The ICRC did not distribute bibles in Libya. However, on some occasions it distributed Qurans in places of detention upon request of the persons detained and this always in full transparency and agreement with the concerned authorities.

The emblems of the Red Cross and Red Crescent bear no religious meaning. They are protected by international humanitarian law, which Libya has adhered to.

9.38am: More helicopter news. Activists have broadcast footage of what they claim is the defection of a captain of a helicopter squadron.

The clip purports to show Captain Ahmed Taher, declaring that he is joining the opposition.

According to our colleague Mona Mahmood, Taher said:

I am captain Ahmed Taher Tarrad from the 59th brigade Hawamat squadron. This is my ID. I declare my defection from Assad's criminal army to join the Free Syrian Army. I am defecting because of Assad's shelling of cities and towns by war planes and helicopters and other types of heavy weapons to kill the innocent civilians; and the commitment of horrible massacres designed to create sectarian division among Syrian people. Long live free Syria.

The clip cannot be independently verified.

Activists from Rastan have uploaded what they claim is the latest bombardment of the opposition stronghold. A helicopter can been flying above the smoke-filled skyline.

Yesterday the UN's supervision mission in Syria broadcast footage of helicopters flying over Syria. Kofi Annan's spokesman Ahmad Fawzi said observers had filmed helicopters firing, in what he claimed was the first documented case of its kind in the conflict.

Human Rights Watch points out that it recorded helicopter attacks as early as February.

8.58am: The US campaign group, Human Rights First, has urged the US state department to obtain more details about recent Russian shipments of attack helicopters.

It issued this statement:

Russian made attack helicopters such as Mil Mi 24 (Mi 25) have been identified by citizens and reporters as a new tactic used in recent months in attacks by the Syrian regime on civilians in areas of Idlib, Rastan and Latakia. While many of the attack helicopter models currently used by the Syrian regime may have been imported a long time ago, any new shipments of such equipment to Syria is very worrying given their possible use against civilians. For this reason, Human Rights First has called on Secretary Clinton to obtain the disclosure of cargo manifests for Russian arms shipments to Syria over the past 16 months, to verify that Russia is in fact not providing the Syrian regime with weapons that are being or can be used to target civilians, as they have recently claimed.

8.36am: (all times BST) Welcome to Middle East Live. Hillary Clinton has accused Russia of escalating a conflict that the UN peacekeeping chief says has descended into civil war. And there are fresh claims that Saudi Arabia and Qatar are supplying weapons to the rebels.

Here's roundup in more detail:

Syria

• Clinton said Russia was shipping attack helicopters to the Assad regime and lying about weapons deliveries. She said:

We have confronted the Russians about stopping their continued arms shipments to Syria. They have, from time to time, said that we shouldn't worry, [that] everything they're shipping is unrelated to [Syria's] actions internally. That's patently untrue, and we are concerned about the latest information we have that there are attack helicopters on the way from Russia to Syria which will escalate the conflict quite dramatically.

UN officials say that helicopter gunships are already being used as activists circulated footage of spent Russian-made helicopter missiles.

• Clinton's remarks directly contradict Russian President Vladmir Putin who claimed earlier this month that Moscow was not supplying arms to Syria which could be used against protesters. "As for arms supplies, Russia is not supplying arms that could be used in civil conflicts," he said.

• Herve Ladsous, head of the UN's department of peacekeeping operations, said that Syria was in a state of civil war. "Clearly what is happening is the government of Syria lost some large chunks of territory, several cities to the opposition, and wants to retake control," he told Reuters. Asked if the crisis can now be characterised as a civil war he said: "Yes, I think we can say that."

• UN observers were prevented from reaching the besieged north-western town of al-Haffa by angry crowds, and were shot at as they left. Sausan Ghosheh, spokeswoman for the UN supervision mission in Syria, said: "The crowd, who appeared to be residents of the area, hurled stones and metal rods at the UN vehicles. The UN observers turned back. "As they were leaving the area, three vehicles heading towards Idlib were fired upon – the source of fire is still unclear."

• Syrian rebels are being armed by Saudi Arabia and Qatar, with the implicit support of Turkey's intelligence agency, a unnamed diplomat told the Independent.

An Ankara-based Western diplomat, who spoke on a condition of anonymity, confirmed that the delivery of "light weapons" to the rebels was a "recent development", one that involved unmarked trucks transporting the weapons to the border for rebel groups. "There are arms coming in with the knowledge of the Turks," he said. The Syrian National Council (SNC), the main umbrella organisation of groups opposed to the regime, vetted the consignment.

• Britain is poised to ban the head of Syria's national Olympic committee from attending the London games next month but allow a young showjumper with close family ties to the regime of Bashar al-Assad to compete as planned. Whitehall sources have indicated that General Mowaffak Joumaa will be refused entry to the UK on the grounds of his links to President Assad and the Syrian military. But Ahmed Hamsho, 18, is the first ever Syrian equestrian to qualify for the Olympics, is expected to compete despite the fact that his father is a close associate of Maher al-Assad, the president's brother and architect of the brutal suppression of the uprising.

Egypt

• More than 50 MPs boycotted the launch of a panel to draft Egypt's new constitution in protest at the domination of Islamists on the group, Alhram reports. Twenty-seven seats of the 100-member constituent assembly have been allocated to Islamist parliamentarians. Other prominent Islamist figures were also selected.

Tunisia

• A night time curfew was imposed in Tunis and seven other areas after Salafi Islamists angered by an art exhibition they say insults Muslims clashed with police. Protesters blocked streets and set tyres alight in the working-class Ettadamen and Sidi Hussein districts of the capital overnight on Monday. Some hurled petrol bombs at police in some of the worst confrontations since last year's revolt ousted Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali as president. An interior ministry official said 2,500 Salafis were still involved in clashes with police in the area on Tuesday evening, 162 people had been detained and 65 members of the security forces had been hurt.

• The Arab Spring is the triumph of democracy not Islam, Tunisia's President Moncef Marzouki told the Guardian. He said:

When people tell me that we are going back to some new Islamic dictatorship, they don't understand the fact that Islam is not the main force; the main force is democracy. We secularists did not become Islamists, the Islamists became democrats, and this is why I think the Arab spring is the triumph of democracy and not Islamism. Islam is just trying to use democracy but in fact when you use democracy, I would not say you become a slave of it, but you become part of it. So this must be understood by the west. Even if we have elections and Ennahda prevails, it does not mean that the Islamist mood is prevailing. It means that the Islamist movement has been co-opted by democracy.

Libya

• A team from the international criminal court has visited colleagues detained by a local militia in the Libyan mountain town of Zintan, the BBC reports. Ahmed al-Jehani, Libya's ICC envoy, said the group was eventually allowed into the town after an initial delay. One of the four detained ICC staff is accused of trying to pass documents to Saif al-Islam Gaddafi.

Some members of Egypt's first freely elected parliament are pressing to scrap laws that protect women

When Yemen's long-term dictator Ali Abdullah Saleh tried to silence Tawakkul Karman, he called in her brother.

Karman was in prison for her part at the forefront of the popular revolution against Saleh's rule, a role that earned her the Nobel peace prize. The president's warning to Karman's brother was blunt. "Saleh told him a clear message: if you don't restrain your sister, whoever disobeys me will be killed," she said. "My brother told me the day I was released from prison. The next morning I went protesting."

The threat says much about Saleh, who was finally toppled in February. But his attempt to use Karman's brother to silence her says something about Yemeni society and other countries across the Arab world where women were in the vanguard of revolutions – joining protests en masse, facing bullets and being killed – looking for more than solely political emancipation.

"The most important thing the Arab spring brought us was to give women leadership roles," said Karman. "When women become leaders of men, and men are following, when women sacrifice themselves and get killed in front of men, when they get detained for political issues and men don't feel ashamed of women who are arrested, this is a change. But is it enough to change the situation of women? The answer is: not yet."

Karman was among several women who played leading roles in uprisings across the Arab world who gathered in Washington recently for a meeting of Vital Voices, a group founded in 1997 by the then first lady Hillary Clinton to empower female leaders. There was agreement that the revolutions freed millions from dictatorship but are delivering only limited gains in the struggle for women's equality – and in some cases are threatening to set back the advances already made.

This week Clinton, who is now US secretary of state, said women's rights in newly liberated Arab countries were a test of whether the revolutions were living up to their promise.

"One of the important indicators as to how the whole process of democratisation, political reform, economic reform is going is the way that the newly formed governments and their allies in the various countries treat women," said Clinton. "To that end, there's mixed news. There's some positive news in that there are certain guarantees put forth about women's rights and opportunities. But there are some worrying actions that certainly don't match those guarantees."

The challenge was demonstrated at the weekend in Cairo's Tahrir square, the crucible of the Egyptian revolution, as hundreds of men attacked women demonstrating for an end to sexual harassment and assaults. Marianne Nagui Hanna Ibrahim was among the hundreds of thousands of Egyptians in the square last year for the protests that brought down President Hosni Mubarak.

"During the 18 days against Mubarak there were no women and men. It was just Egyptians in danger. I was in the square almost daily and I didn't witness a single case of sexual harassment.

"But that changed after Mubarak stepped down. We were back to face the reality of where we are as Egyptian women," she said. "We're not a priority even with fellow revolutionaries. They're just thinking of the political change but no one is thinking of setting the rules for basic rights including women's rights. I think because even the activists don't really consider women's rights part of the larger concept of human rights, which is a huge issue."

The setbacks are not only on the street. Some members of Egypt's first freely elected parliament, in which the Muslim Brotherhood is the largest party, are pressing to scrap laws that protect women on the grounds that they were introduced by the Mubarak regime and are therefore illegitimate.

"We're going years backwards when it comes to women's issues. One MP wanted to discuss cancelling the ban on female genital mutilation. Another proposed reducing the age of marriage to 12 for girls. Another wanted to cancel the law giving the right to Muslim women to initiate divorce. If this is how the Egyptian parliament is after the revolution we have a serious problem," Ibrahim said. "We know the Muslim Brotherhood agenda. We're not worried that they're likely to force us to wear veils. I'm thinking more on the deeper level because they consider women as second class. You can see it from their speeches and statements on television. They're always talking about morals, virtues, family. They want to keep us in the home. This is how they see women. Not as an equal citizen."

In the early days of the Libyan revolution, when victory was far from assured, Salwa Bugaighis was to be found sitting with her gun in her lap in Benghazi as Muammar Gaddafi's forces besieged the city. She was an original member of the rebels' national transitional council but quit after a few months because women were virtually excluded from the new government.

Bugaighis, a human rights lawyer, has campaigned to get as many women as possible on the ballot for next month's elections to a national conference that will appoint a government to draw up a new constitution.

"There are many women candidates. We know they will not win but we want to send a message that we are here; even if we lose this time, there will be the next time," she said.

"It's culture and psychological too. For decades, men and women both didn't see any women in power so automatically they thought this is the role of the man. During the Gaddafi years, there were 132 ministers. Just three of them were women. Those three are not the kind of women people like." Those ministers included Huda Ben Amer, who rose to become one of the former Libyan dictator's most trusted lieutenants after a stomach-churning incident in which she was an enthusiastic participant in a public hanging in Benghazi in 1984.

Bugaighis is looking beyond the immediate challenges of the armed factions that still hold sway in parts of Libya to the writing of a new constitution to guarantee equality. But she says practice will matter more than declarations.

"I want to be able to feel it. I'm not worried about the law and the constitution, I'm worried about the awareness of the people. In Egypt and Syria and Tunisia there was a constitution but did they respect that constitution? Did they practice that constitution? If the government respects the constitution, the ordinary people will respect the constitution," she said.

There is common agreement that the revolution has changed the game. But, says Ibrahim: "When it comes to women, it has failed. The biggest powers in the country at the moment are the military and the Muslim Brotherhood and both are women-free by default.

"But the revolution has also changed the situation. You can see it in the young women. We are more persistent in claiming our rights. More women are talking about sexual harassment than before. We are open about it and we are clear about our demands. The social change that is taking place – it's gradual but it's still there.

"The hope I'm still holding on to is that during the 18 days we were on the frontlines as women, and women lost their lives, they were injured, and they were fighting shoulder to shoulder next to men. No one can take this from us because we were there." Karman agrees. "The revolution is still continuing. Now women are taking the role of being the saviour and not the victim waiting for a solution to rescue her from those who took her rights," she said. "We will not stand for the fact that women would be involved in fighting for the revolution but post-revolution they will disappear. We've passed that time when women can be used that way."

Libyan leadership says it is powerless to release four officials detained last week while visiting Saif al-Islam

The Libyan leadership said on Wednesday night it was powerless to release four officials from the international criminal court detained last week while visiting Muammar Gaddafi's imprisoned son, Saif al-Islam.

The National Transitional Council (NTC), which led the dictator's overthrow last year, insisted it could not influence the investigation into allegations that some of the delegation were carrying coded documents from a fugitive and a camera disguised as a pen.

The Libyan attorney general's office said that the ICC detainees, who were organising Saif's legal defence, would be held for 45 days during the investigation, deepening the crisis in relations between Libya and the international community over the incident.

The officials were detained in the remote hilltop town of Zintan by a local militia after visiting the former heir to the Gaddafi regime, but despite demands from the ICC, the Australian government, human rights groups and the international criminal bar for their immediate release on grounds of diplomatic immunity, the NTC said it could not secure their freedom.

The council's spokesman, Mohamed al-Harizi, told the Guardian: "The NTC cannot intervene. It is a matter for the legal department and the attorney general. Hopefully they will be released once the evidence has been examined, but there has to be an investigation."

The ICC has not responded directly to the allegations. Ahmed al-Gehani, a Libyan lawyer who is in charge of the Saif case and liaises between the government and the ICC, told the Associated Press the detainees "are well, they are in a guesthouse, not in a prison. They have food, water, and are being treated well."

The four detained officials include Melinda Taylor, an Australian lawyer who was appointed as an interim defence counsel for Saif in December, and her Lebanese translator, Helene Assaf, as well as Alexander Khodakov, a Russian diplomat, and Esteban Losilla, a Spanish academic.

The four appear to have been caught in a three-way tussle between the Tripoli government, the Zintan militia holding Saif, and the ICC over where Saif should be put on trial for alleged crimes against humanity committed during the Libyan insurrection last year.

Harizi told Australia's ABC channel on Tuesday that Taylor had handed Saif documents from a former close aide, Mohamed Ismail, wanted by Tripoli, and would be freed once she gave details of his whereabouts.

"We don't have anything against this woman. We just need some information from her. After that she will be free," Harizi said.

On Wednesday night, however, Harizi, withdrew his statement, insisting he had no control over the timing of her release. Alajmi Ali Ahmed al-Atiri, the head of the Zintan militia, told journalists that espionage equipment, described as a camera hidden inside a pen, had been found among the delegation's effects, and vowed not to bow to political pressure to release the  officials.

Taylor's colleagues said it was unimaginable that the 36-year-old, who has a two-year-old daughter, would have done anything improper, noting she had been working in international justice since 1999 and at the ICC's office of public counsel for the defence since 2006.

"She is a dedicated professional who is completely ethical in everything she does," her British husband, Geoff Roberts, said. "This is a test for the ICC and for international justice, because if the court cannot protect its people, then the system fails."

Mishana Hosseinioun, an Iranian friend of Saif who is studying in the UK, from where she has been campaigning for legal representation for him, said: "I really hope the international community will wake up and finally do the right thing, although it is sad that it takes the detention of an international lawyer to reveal the extent of the injustices there."