Ex-Libyan oil minister pulled from river

Libya's rebel leadership on Thursday welcomed the defection of former oil minister Shukri Ghanem, a key official in the regime of Moamer Kadhafi."The National Transitional Council (NTC) salutes the latest defection from the Kadhafi regime, that of Oil Minister Shukri Ghanem," Abdul Hafiz Ghoga, vice president of the rebel group which holds the east of Libya, said in a statement."In recent days and weeks we have witnessed an acceleration in defections from the Kadhafi regime, which has no legitimacy, credibility or future," he added.

Libyan Oil Minister Shukri Ghanem told ANSA news agency on Wednesday he had left his country to join the uprising against Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi "to fight for a democratic country"."I can't work in this situation so I have left my country and my job to join the choice made by young Libyans to fight for a democratic country," he said in Rome.But Ghanem added that he was not working with the National Transitional Council in Benghazi, the main rebel administration in eastern Libya.

Pressure is piling on Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi after an apparent defection from his oil minister, a rebuke from Moscow, NATO air strikes on Tripoli and a leading prosecutor sought his arrest.A Tunisian government official told AFP that Oil Minister Shukri Ghanem, a veteran of Kadhafi's regime, had left Libya and was in neighbouring Tunisia.Ghanem, also chairman of Libya's national oil company, crossed the border by car on Saturday and checked into a hotel on the southern tourist island of Djerba, the official said.

ALGIERS, Algeria — The death toll from the bloody terrorist siege at a natural gas plant in the Sahara climbed to at least 81 on Sunday as Algerian forces searching the complex for explosives found dozens more bodies, many so badly disfigured they could not immediately be identified, a security official said. Algerian special forces stormed the facility on Saturday to end the four-day siege of the remote desert refinery, and the government said then that 32 militants and 23 hostages were killed, but that the death toll was likely to rise.