Bani Walid and Sirte centres of fierce fighting as rebels and regime loyalists engage in last-ditch battle for supremacy
Ian Black in Bani Walid and Chris Stephen in Sirte
guardian.co.uk, Friday 16 September 2011 20.02 BST
Article history
Libyan rebel fighters storm into Bani Walid city centre in a final push to extinguish resistance from Gaddafi loyalists. Photograph: Youssef Boudlal/Reuters
Libyan rebel forces launched offensives against Gaddafi loyalists on Friday but fierce resistance and poor organisation stopped them taking two strongholds whose control is vital to consolidate the grip of the post-revolutionary regime.
Rebels occupied the airport at Sirte, a symbolically important town which was Muammar Gaddafi's birthplace and which sits on the main road between Tripoli and Benghazi.
At Bani Walid, 100 miles south of the capital, it quickly became clear that the war to secure Libya's future is not over. Just outside the town, at a rebel checkpoint, Red Crescent ambulances screeched to a halt to disgorge men killed or wounded in a long day's fighting, with cries of "Allahu Akbar" ringing out as machine gunfire and an occasional shell burst punctured the hot afternoon air.
Plumes of smoke rose above low-rise apartment blocks just short of the hill, where pro-Gaddafi forces held back a rebel assault that began in the morning but was petering out in disarray and frustration by the time the evening drew near.
Two separate rebel brigades attacked from north and south, but the defenders fought back with mortars and Grad rockets. Gaddafi snipers, on the high ground, were a menace. "They are fighting hard," said Ishmail Abbouda, who had been studying in London before returning home to defend the revolution with a Kalashnikov rifle and Beretta pistol tucked into his flak jacket. "It was rough but we are doing well. And it will take another day or two. I think Gaddafi is there." Fact and rumour were impossible to disentangle. Several rebels spoke of the capture of the bodyguard of Saif al-Islam, the deposed dictator's fugitive son who had been rumoured to be in Bani Walid. Others described a convoy of 30 SUVs leaving town in the early morning, firing wildly perhaps to create a diversion.
Ali Shita, who was lightly injured in the foot and over his left eye by a mortar shell that killed two comrades, hobbled away wincing, watched by Abdel-Rahman Khaled, a burly former Gaddafi bodyguard who defected on 23 March. His unit, the Mohammed Magarief Brigade, is named after a veteran opponent of the regime.
"They shot at us from behind in the middle of town, just after eight in the morning," said Nabil Darawil, wearing a ragtag uniform of T-shirt and baggy combat trousers. "We captured one sniper but there are a lot of them." It was at least the third attempt to take the town. Many residents have fled.
Dr Wissam Abu Jarad, neat in green scrubs at a roadside clinic further north, treated 10 injuries and confirmed four dead by mid-afternoon. Inside his small building an old man wept over the corpse of his nephew as subdued rebels milled around.
At the final checkpoint before the town, rebel tempers were running high. Three young men, unarmed, dishevelled and terrified, were shoved into a dilapidated hut and lined up against a breezeblock wall. "Gaddafi forces," one of their captors screamed. Outside, another fighter whose brother had been killed earlier, fired a single shot over the head of a news photographer.
Signs of chaos and bickering were rife among the rebel troops, who argued volubly as the evening pullback was completed. "Victory is certain," said Ramadan Abdul-Rahman, a local man. "But our forces do need to be better organised."
Bani Walid, two hours south of Tripoli, is the centre of the powerful Warfallah tribe, the country's largest. If it and Sirte were captured only Sabha, hundreds of miles south on the edge of the Sahara, will still be in the hands of the old regime.
Hard news from Sabha is rare, but a British military spokesman said British jets had fired two dozen Brimstone missiles to destroy a group of Libyan armoured vehicles near the town on Thursday.
On the Mediterranean coast at Sirte, thick clouds of smoke billowed from the city centre, accompanied by frequent detonations, as rebel units attacked a series of strongholds in the city. Nato jets could be heard and in the afternoon there were a series of loud explosions, possibly of bombs.
After capturing much of the city on Thursday night, along with the strategic east-west highway that runs south of the city, opposition forces pushed north into the city and south into the hinterland.At the highway intersection turnoff leading to Sirte, convoys of worn pickup trucks with cannons and machine guns rumbled into the town. Columns of smoke rose at intervals from the city, hidden from view by a wooded hillside.
Commanders said they launched the attack after reports that pro-Gaddafi militias had begun attacks on the homes of residents originally from Misrata living in the central District One. A relief force broke through to them on Thursday night, but retreated in the early hours of Friday morning, fearing their presence would attract rocket and artillery fire from loyalist forces at the airbase and further south.
Instead, rebels have switched their attention to destroying these forces, pushing out in all directions south of the coastal highway, and capturing the well defended airbase.
Misrata Military Council, commanding the operation, said it expected to clear the hinterland far enough to make the city safe for units to destroy strongholds of loyalist troops based around an insurance building and beachfront villas.
The fighting came a day after the flag-flying visit to Tripoli by Nicolas Sarkozy and David Cameron. They were followed on Friday by the Turkish prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who displayed his Muslim faith and solidarity by joining worshippers in newly renamed Martyrs Square, – or Green Square under the old regime.
"From here I call out to Sirte," he said of the besieged coastal city. "Come, right now. Some 10,000 brothers and sisters are hungry and thirsty – embrace your brothers in Tripoli. Spilling blood does not suit us. Let us come together."
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