SIRTE (Reuters) – Libya's new rulers said on Wednesday they believed fugitive former leader Muammar Gaddafi was being shielded by nomadic tribesmen in the desert near the Algerian border, while his followers fend off assaults on his hometown.

Intense sniper and artillery fire from pro-Gaddafi fighters has so far prevented National Transitional Council (NTC) forces from taking Sirte despite more than two weeks of fighting and two full-on assaults.

One of Gaddafi's last two bastions, it has withstood a siege, NTC tank and rocket fire as well as NATO air strikes, and the United Nations and international aid agencies are worried about conditions for civilians trapped inside.

More than a month since NTC fighters captured the capital Tripoli, Gaddafi remains defiantly on the run pledging to lead a campaign of armed resistance against the new leaders.

Gaddafi himself may be holed up near the western town of Ghadames, near the Algerian border, under the protection of Tuareg tribesmen, a senior NTC military official said.

“There has been a fight between Tuareg tribesmen who are loyal to Gaddafi and Arabs living there (in the south). We are negotiating. The Gaddafi search is taking a different course,” Hisham Buhagiar told Reuters, without elaborating.

Many Tuaregs, nomads who roam the desert spanning the borders of Libya and its neighbors, have backed Gaddafi since he supported their rebellions against the governments of Mali and Niger in the 1970s and allowed them to settle in Libya.

Buhagiar said Gaddafi's most politically prominent son, Saif al-Islam, was in the other final loyalist holdout, Bani Walid, and that another son, Mutassem, was in Sirte.

STRUGGLE FOR SIRTE

Lack of coordination and division at the front-line have been hampering NTC attempts to capture Sirte and Bani Walid.

Fighting continued on separate eastern and western fronts in Sirte on Wednesday and commanders said they would try to join the two fronts together and take the city's airport.

“There is progress toward the coastal road and the airport…. The plan is for various brigades to invade from other directions,” NTC fighter Amran al-Oweiwi said.

Street-fighting was under way at a roundabout 2 km (1.5 miles) east of the town center, where anti-Gaddafi fighters were pinned down for a third day by sniper and artillery fire.

As NATO planes circled overhead, NTC forces moved five tanks to the front but were immediately met with Grad rockets fired from inside the town, missing the tanks by only yards.

A Reuters crew at the scene saw several NTC fighters flee the front-line under heavy fire while others stood their ground.

“If I die, I'll die proud,” one fighter shouted as he left a group of hiding comrades and ran back to the front.

“At the buildings! At the buildings!” an NTC commander ordered fighters manning the tanks, in an apparent attempt to target snipers, as thick black smoke rose over the town.

On the western front, fighters leapt into pick-up trucks mounted with machineguns and anti-aircraft guns and raced in the direction of the airport.

Medical workers said 15 fighters were killed in Sirte on Tuesday, the highest single-day death toll. Two more, including a senior NTC field commander, were killed on Wednesday. More than 100 fighters were wounded, many from sniper fire.

NTC fighters captured 60 African mercenaries in Sirte on Wednesday. They said most had come from Chad and Mali to fight with Gaddafi loyalists.

A commander leading the attack on Sirte said on Tuesday he was in talks with elders inside the city about a truce, but the head of an anti-Gaddafi unit on the east rejected negotiations.

In Tripoli, a senior NTC officer said his fighters, on entering Sirte two days ago, had found and seized a helicopter under camouflage that appeared to have been made ready for a swift departure. He told Reuters he suspected the helicopter was assigned for the use of a senior official of the ousted Gaddafi government, possibly one of Gaddafi's sons.

GADDAFI CLAN STILL VOCAL

As the fighting continues, humanitarian organizations are sounding the alarm about the possibility of civilian casualties in the town. Gaddafi's spokesman has said NATO air strikes and NTC shelling are killing civilians.

NATO and the NTC deny that. They say Gaddafi loyalists are using civilians inside Sirte as human shields and have kidnapped and executed those they believe to be NTC supporters.

“Our main worry is the people being displaced because of the fighting,” said Jafar Vishtawi, a delegate of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), near Sirte.

Civilians fleeing the town have said there is no power, little water and that the local population is terrified.

Taking the last two Gaddafi strongholds and finding the toppled leader would bring the NTC closer to establishing their credibility as the country's new rulers.

A Syria-based television station that has been broadcasting audio speeches by Gaddafi, reported on Tuesday that Gaddafi had addressed his supporters and urged them to fight in a speech broadcast on a local radio station in Bani Walid. The report by Arrai television could not be independently verified.

In a separate development, NTC justice minister Mohammed al-Alagi said he was ready to work with Scottish authorities to probe the possible involvement of others in the Lockerbie bombing apart from the sole Libyan convicted for the attack.

His remark reversed a position he took only on Monday, when he said that as far as Libya was concerned the case of the bombing of the U.S.-bound airliner over the Scottish village of Lockerbie with the loss of 270 lives was closed.

Scottish prosecutors had asked Libya's NTC to give them access to papers or witnesses that could implicate more suspects in the attack, possibly including Gaddafi himself.

(Additional reporting by William MacLean and Alexander Dziadosz in Tripoli, Emad Omar in Benghazi, Samia Nakhoul in London, Christian Lowe and Hamid Ould Ahmed in Algiers; Writing by Barry Malone; Editing by Peter Graff and Louise Ireland)

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MAIDUGURI, Nigeria – Security forces have arrested a top commander of a radical Muslim sect who is accused of orchestrating attacks in the country’s northeast that have left police, clerics and others dead, a governor said Wednesday.

Borno state Gov. Kashim Shettima told The Associated Press in an interview at his heavily guarded office that officials believe a negotiated peace can be reached with the sect known locally as Boko Haram.

However, he warned that those involved in the group who continue the sect’s sectarian campaign of assassinations and bombings will be hunted down by the increasing military and police presence in his state.

“I believe the worst is over,” Shettima said, adding that five others also were arrested and are being detained.

Shettima, a governor under the regional All Nigeria People’s Party, came to power in the nation’s April elections. In the time since, Boko Haram has launched a wave of attacks in and around Maiduguri, a dusty city in Nigeria’s far northeast that borders with Cameroon, Chad and Niger, as well as the Sahara Desert.

The violence became so bad that university officials canceled classes in the town, and authorities banned all motorcycles since the group uses them to launch their attacks.

Now, soldiers in flak jackets and helmets sit behind sandbagged barriers along major roads, intersections and buildings, armed with heavy machines guns.

That presence, as well as other measures, have cut down violence in the city, Shettima said. Investigation by military and the police recently saw authorities arrested the man responsible for planning and orchestrating attacks around the city, the governor said.

Five others also were arrested and are being held by military and the police, Shettima said.

Boko Haram, whose name means “Western education is sacrilege,” came to prominence in July 2009 when its members rioted in Maiduguri. The riots and an ensuing military crackdown left 700 people dead and the group’s mosque in ruins.

The group, which wants strict implementation of Shariah law across Nigeria, re-emerged last year to carry out shootings and bombings.

Boko Haram maintains a loose command-and-control structure, allowing different groups to operate autonomously from each other, Shettima said.

“They operate in some sort of cells, some sort of units that interlinked, but generally they take directives from one commander,” he said.

While mainly focused on local issues, Boko Haram claimed responsibility for the Aug. 26 car bombing of the United Nations headquarters in Nigeria that killed 23 people and wounded another 116. The commander for U.S. military operations in Africa has said that Boko Haram may be trying to coordinate attacks with al-Shabab of Somalia and north African group al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb.

While Shettima and others say progress is being made, residents of Maiduguri largely refuse to talk about the security situation in public. Privately, they say they remain scared of both Boko Haram and the security agencies, who have been accused of brutality in their new crackdown against the sect.

Nigeria, a nation of 150 million people, is split largely between a Christian south and a Muslim north. Unemployment and unceasing poverty, coming despite the nation making billions a year from oil production, have increased resentment in recent years in the north. Boko Haram tapped into that unrest, something the governor acknowledged.

“A political problem needs a political solution,” Shettima said.

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Jon Gambrell can be reached at http://www.twitter.com/jongambrellAP.

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Relatives of the defendants have protested their innocence

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The chief suspect in the trial over a bombing which killed 17 in the Moroccan city of Marrakesh has retracted his confession and denied involvement.

Adel Othmani, told the court he had been set up by intelligence services.

The blast in April ripped through a cafe in the city's main square. Most of its victims were foreign tourists.

Mr Othmani, who faces the death penalty if convicted, denies murder and making explosives. Seven others deny playing a lesser role. The trial was adjourned.

The blast at the Argana cafe, in Djemaa El-Fna – the tourist heart of Marrakesh – killed eight French nationals and two Moroccans, as well as citizens of Britain, Canada, Switzerland, Portugal and The Netherlands.

‘Torture threat’

It was the deadliest attack in the north African kingdom since bombings in the coastal city of Casablanca in 2003 killed 45 people, including suicide attackers.

The Argana bombing was Morocco's deadliest attack for eight years

During Thursday's hearing, Mr Othmani told judges and lawyers that he had never set foot in Marrakesh.

He explained his earlier confession and participation in a reenactment of the attack as having been performed under threat of torture.

Mr Othmani claimed Moroccan intelligence had “created a terrorist event” and then quickly arrested suspects to prevent pro-democracy protests and prove the country was the “perfect ally to the West in the fight against terrorism”, the Associated Press news agency reported.

Outside court, where suspects' relatives staged a demonstration, Mr Othmani's older brother, Adil, told the BBC: “He has not done anything wrong. All this has been lies. He has been blackmailed with torture.”

Delay fears

Relatives of the victims also attended the hearing.

French citizen Eric Bedier, whose brother-in-law Eric Asnar died in the attacks, flew in from Marseille. He and the victim's mother, Nadine Asnar, said they planned to stay throughout the trial.

“We must be present and we must show solidarity until the next process. The Moroccan system is different… to the French system as here it can often be postponed,” Mr Bedier said.

The suspects are accused of offences including belonging to a banned religious group.

Police have described some of them as “admirers of al-Qaeda”. Moroccan authorities had initially blamed al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb for the bombing but the group has denied any involvement.

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Situated on the equator on Africa's east coast, Kenya has been described as “the cradle of humanity”.

In the Great Rift Valley palaeontologists have discovered some of the earliest evidence of man's ancestors.

In the present day, Kenya's ethnic diversity has produced a vibrant culture but is also a source of conflict.

After independence from Britain in 1963, politics was dominated by the charismatic Jomo Kenyatta. He was succeeded in 1978 by Daniel arap Moi, who remained in power for 24 years. The ruling Kenya African National Union, Kanu, was the only legal political party for much of the 1980s.

Violent unrest – and international pressure – led to the restoration of multi-party politics in the early 1990s. But it was to be another decade before opposition candidate Mwai Kibaki ended nearly 40 years of Kanu rule with his landslide victory in 2002's general election.

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At a glance

Politics: Presidential elections in 2007 led to widespread unrest, denting the country's reputation for stability. A power-sharing government was eventually formed. A referendum on a new constitution in August 2010 produced a resounding “yes” vote

Economy: The economy has been recovering over recent years

International: Kenya has mediated in conflicts in Somalia and Sudan

Despite President Kibaki's pledge to tackle corruption, some donors estimated that up to $1bn had been lost to graft between 2002 and 2005.

Other pressing challenges include high unemployment, crime and poverty; most Kenyans live below the poverty level of $1 a day. Droughts frequently put millions of people at risk.

Kenya has been a leading light in the Somali and Sudanese peace processes.

With its scenic beauty and abundant wildlife, Kenya is one of Africa's major safari destinations.

The lucrative tourist industry has bounced back following the slump that followed bomb attacks in Nairobi in 1998 and Mombasa in 2002. And in 2006 tourism was the country's best hard currency earner, ahead of horticulture and tea.

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