.25pm: William Hague, the foreign secretary, is expected to speak about the failed SAS mission to Libya at 3.30pm. Hague has come under pressure today after it emerged he had personally approved the operation. On the politics live blog, my colleague Andrew Sparrow provides the context to the statement Hague will read in the House of Commons:
He's going to have to explain why he sent an MI6/SAS mission into Libya by helicopter at night to get in touch with the rebels when it appears he could have just called them up to arrange an appointment.
3.21pm: The Guardian's Chris McGreal is in Benghazi, where he says there is "mystification" from anti-Gaddafi forces over Britain's botched SAS mission to Libya.
Chris has been speaking to the provisional transitional National Council of Libya – the anti-Gaddafi forces council – about the mission and about the council's demands.
"There's general mystification," Chris says. "The first thing is that they suggest that the British forces and diplomats just didn't seem to know who they were looking for. They didn't seem to know who was in charge in Benghazi, and they portray them as really searching out anyone they could find to talk to.
"This left the members of the [National Council of Libya] who were told about these British officials arriving mystified as to what their intent was and at least according to the ones I've spoken to no formal offers or approaches were made ... this seem to have frustrated the new Libyan leadership, not least because it was done in what they describe as an indefensible way – an illegal way."
3:08pm: Libyan troops loyal to Muammar Gaddafi are rounding up black African migrants to force them to fight anti-Gaddafi rebels, Reuters is reporting.
The news agency said it had spoken to several young African men who have fled to Tunisia. The men told reporters at the Ras Jdir refugee camp near the Tunisia-Libya border that they were raided in their homes by soldiers, beaten and robbed of their savings and identity papers, then detained and finally offered money to take up arms for the state.
Those who refused were told they would never leave, said Fergo Fevomoye, a 23-year-old who crossed the border on Sunday.
"They will give you a gun and train you like a soldier. Then you fight the war of Libya. As I am talking to you now there is many blacks in training who say they are going to fight this war. They have prized [paid] them with lots of money."
Fevomoye said Africans who are first intimidated and stripped of everything were then offered 250 Libyan dinars ($200) to train as fighters.
"They said I should take money and fight. They would give me 250 dinars. I said No. When I told them No they told me I would not go anywhere," he told Reuters.
The Libyan governemnt has denied using foreign nationals to fight the rebels, saying instead that dark-skinned Libyans serving in its security forces had been mistaken for black African mercenaries.
source
