U.N. Secretary General Expresses New Alarm Over Libya Strife
By Dan Bilefsky, New York Times, March 24, 2011

UNITED NATIONS — Secretary General Ban Ki-moon expressed deep concern Thursday about a possible humanitarian crisis in Libya despite Security Council steps to isolate and punish Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s forces, which have been ignoring warnings to stop a military campaign to crush a rebel movement seeking to end his long rule.

Mr. Ban said a new wave of up to 250,000 refugees and migrants had been displaced by the fighting in Libya, and said he was worried “about the protection of civilians, abuses of human rights and violations of international humanitarian law and the access of civilian populations to basic commodities and services in areas currently under siege.”

Presenting an update to the 15-member Security Council one week after it called for an immediate halt to hostilities and approved air strikes and a no-fly zone against Libya, Mr. Ban said Col. Qaddafi’s forces continued to defy the United Nations. “In short, there is no evidence that the Libyan authorities have taken steps to carry out their obligations,” under the U.N. resolutions, he said.

Mr. Ban said more than 335,658 people had fled Libya since the beginning of the crisis while 9,000 remained stranded along Libya’s borders with Tunisia and Egypt. As of March 21, he said the United Nations had helped evacuate more than 60,000 people leaving the country.

He said the United Nations had been struggling to get access to monitor the welfare of civilians and had received reports of arrests and disappearances among the civilian population. United Nations experts have reported hundreds of disappearances over the past few months and have expressed fears that those who have disappeared are being tortured or executed....

more @ http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/24/world/africa/25nations.html