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Gaddafi troops fight to maintain positions in strategic city of Zawiyah

17 August 2011 21:52 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. Libyan rebels launched an assault on the only functioning oil refinery in Zawiyah on Wednesday, with reports of heavy clashes in the key city, which is only 30 miles from the capital, Tripoli, APA reports quoting guardian.co.uk website.

While rebel commanders elsewhere in Libya reported significant advances, in Zawiyah the opposition’s struggle for control was hampered by resistance from troops loyal to Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, including snipers and rocket and artillery positions located outside the city.

Gaddafi’s troops are reported to hold the main hospital to the east of the town â€“ with government snipers firing from the roof and doctors unable to enter or leave â€“ as well as several other areas straddling the main motorway to the capital.

One rebel fighter, Ramadan Keshadat, said that his forces controlled parts of the refinery complex in the city’s north on the Mediterranean coast, while some regime troops and workers remain inside.

He said rebels and regime forces clashed there on Tuesday; then the rebel fighters pulled out at nightfall and made a new push in daylight.

An AP photographer who entered the refinery with the rebels reported hearing sniper fire. Another rebel told the AP that the oil pipeline to the capital had been cut, but this could not be confirmed.

Elsewhere, anti-government fighters told the Guardian they had taken control of Badr, a small town on the edge of the rebel-held western mountains, and the site of a government army base. Four rebels were killed in fighting, with two pro-Gaddafi houses putting up fierce resistance, they said.

At the Dehiba border crossing between Tunisia and rebel-controlled western Libya, one fighter claimed that rebels were now in control of Garyan, a crossroads between Tripoli and the Gaddafi stronghold of Sabha. "Garyan is free. They have seized a lot of weapons from Gaddafi’s forces," one fighter said.

At the border crossing, wounded rebel fighters were being evacuated to Tunisia while others â€“ shot in previous encounters â€“ were returning in the other direction to the frontline.

Esam Omeish, a Washington-based Libyan doctor bringing in medical supplies, claimed that the momentum was overwhelmingly with rebel forces. "Five big cities have fallen in the last three days," he said. "Garyan is fallen, which is central to the control of the south. I’m in touch with a lot of folks from Tripoli. They are in high spirits."

Rebels in Misrata said they had made significant advances out of the city, threatening to cut Tripoli’s last remaining highway linking it to the rest of the country.

Fighters in armed pickup trucks swept 30 miles south across the desert to take the small village of Bir Durfan, saying they met no resistance. "There are no Gaddafi troops, they are broken," said broadcaster Ramadan Maiteeg from Misrata’s Radio Freedom Voice. "They will reach Bani Walid soon."

A second advance pushed down the coast road, with fighting raging in the small town of al-Heesha, 70 miles south-east of Misrata. The advance, if confirmed, leaves Gaddafi facing the prospect of a siege of Tripoli with all roads cut and the sea and air controlled by Nato.

But the rebels’ difficulties in Zawiyah, where a small number of snipers and artillery outside the town have slowed the advance, are indicative of the uphill struggle they will face if they have to fight for the capital Tripoli itself.

On Wednesday afternoon, an al-Jazeera correspondent in Zawiyah reported Grad missiles landing near a rebel position under a key bridge. While Nato air strikes have helped destroy Gaddafi’s ammunition dumps, military facilities and vehicles in the open, their use will be hampered in heavily populated urban areas where the front lines have been fluid, involving building-to-building fighting of the kind already seen in Misrata.

Although the distance to Tripoli from Zawiyah is short, rebels â€“ still relatively few in number â€“ now face the largest concentration of pro-regime forces, including the best trained and best equipped units, who have shown no signs yet of splitting from Gaddafi and his family.

Tripoli is also home to a large concentration of those with both tribal and political loyalties to the regime.The Libyan rebels made a dramatic advance over the weekend out of their bases in the western mountains near the border with Tunisia into Zawiyah

The rebel advance, however, is tightening the noose around Tripoli â€“ which could set the stage for a different kind of stalemate in the short term with no sign either of a hoped for uprising by Tripoli residents in areas like the large suburb of Tajoura which saw a brutal crackdown at the beginning of the uprising.

The fighters are closing in on the capital from the west and the south, while Nato controls the seas off Tripoli, which sits on the Mediterranean coast.

Elsewhere rebels claimed Gaddafi forces further west had abandoned two towns and were retreating toward the Tunisian border.

"Gaddafi’s forces this morning withdrew from the towns of Tiji and Badr because they felt surrounded from all sides," said the spokesman, named Abdulrahman, told Reuters by telephone from Zintan, a rebel headquarters in the Western Mountains.

"The revolutionaries have now entered Tiji and Badr. The [Gaddafi] brigades retreated to Zuwarah and Jameel, near the Tunisian border. I think they will surrender soon because roads to Tripoli are closed," he added.