Incident

Home page

Incident

Libya rebels retake land, NATO cites air strike woes

06 April 2011 20:21 (UTC +04:00)

Baku â€“ APA. Libyan rebels regained ground in a new advance on an oil port on Wednesday but accused NATO of inaction hindering their quest to oust Muammar Gaddafi, APA reports quoting â€œReutersâ€.
NATO said Gaddafi was making it increasingly difficult for its pilots to carry out air strikes by ensconcing his forces in heavily populated areas and using civilians as human shields.
In their eastern heartland, ill-trained insurgents thrust back westwards toward the contested oil port of Brega, recovering mostly desert terrain lost in a pell-mell retreat from Gaddafi’s superior firepower the day before.
Rebels returning to the tiny outpost of al-Arbaeen, midway between Brega and their frontline town of Ajdabiyah, spoke of rocket duels close to Brega’s port as both sides strived to end a ragged stalemate in the oil-producing state’s civil war.
There was little doubt the rebels had made ground after falling back at least 40 km (25 miles) on Tuesday but it was impossible to verify accounts that they were closing in on Brega once again.
There were reports of mortar and rocket battles near the town on Libya’s desolate Mediterranean highway 80 km (50 miles) west of Ajdabiyah. Fighting had resumed at daybreak after government forces were resupplied with ammunition and swung east from Brega, rebel officer Mohamed el-Masrafy told Reuters.
"God willing, we are going to try to enter Brega today," said rebel Idriss Abdel Karim, but he and various comrades complained of a lack of support from NATO bombers.
"(Government forces) are scared of NATO air strikes but NATO doesn’t bomb anything in the first place," he said.
"There have been no air strikes. We hear the sound, but they don’t bomb anything," said Hossam Ahmed, another rebel.
"What is NATO waiting for? We have cities that are being destroyed. Ras Lanuf, Bin Jawad, Brega, and Gaddafi is destroying Misrata completely," added Said Emburak, an Ajdabiyah resident.
NATO’s air strikes are targeting Gaddafi’s military infrastructure but only to protect civilians, not to provide close air support for rebels, much to their dismay, as part of a no-fly zone mandated by the U.N. Security Council.
Still, their claims of abandonment since NATO took over the mission from a U.S.-British-French coalition, whose initial onslaught on Gaddafi’s forced had tilted the war the rebels’ way, put the Western military alliance on the defensive.
Spokeswoman Carmen Romero maintained that "the pace of our operations continues unabated. The ambition and the position of our strikes has not changed."
HUMAN SHIELDS
She said that relieving the siege of Misrata, a rebel enclave in the west, remained the priority but conceded that Gaddafi’s army was proving a resourceful, elusive target.
"The situation on the ground is constantly evolving. Gaddafi’s forces are changing tactics, using civilian vehicles, hiding tanks in cities such as Misrata and using human shields to hide behind," Romero told reporters in Brussels.
She reiterated NATO’s position that air power had destroyed 30 percent of Gaddafi’s military capacity thus far.
Western air power has fashioned a rough military balance in Libya, preventing Gaddafi troops from overrunning the motley rebel force dominating the east -- but not forceful enough for the insurgents to advance solidly hundreds of kilometers along the Mediterranean coast to the capital Tripoli in the west.
Masrafy told Reuters that the front line was about 20 km (12 miles) east of Brega, the focus of a weeklong to-and-fro battle. A sustained government assault on Tuesday drove rebels about halfway back to Ajdabiyah, gateway to their Benghazi powerbase.
The fighting across the open desert highway has been very fluid with territory won and lost very quickly.
French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said NATO operations were at risk of getting "bogged down" because Gaddafi’s forces were making it harder for alliance pilots to distinguish them from civilians by hunkering down in populated areas.
He told France Info radio that he would address the issue shortly with the head of NATO, adding that Misrata’s ordeal "cannot go on" but that "the situation is unclear."
Admiral Edouard Guillaud, France’s armed forces chief, told Europe 1 radio: "I would like things to go faster but ... protecting civilians means not firing anywhere near them. That is precisely the difficulty."
Misrata, under daily shelling, tank and sniper fire, is the sole significant population center in western Libya -- about 200 km (120 miles) east of Tripoli -- where a two-month-old popular revolt against Gaddafi has not been stamped out.
"TERRORISING" PEOPLE OF MISRATA
Rebels holed up in Misrata denied links with al Qaeda on Wednesday and accused NATO of indecision and failing to protect civilians after what they called a government artillery barrage that began overnight and lasted well into Wednesday.
"I ask the international community, which is still confused and reluctant to bomb his (Gaddafi) forces properly: isn’t he the main threat to civilians?" said Gemal, a rebel spokesman.
"This shelling aims at terrorizing the people. Our children do not go to schools ... Stress and nervous breakdowns are increasing among the people," he said.
Neighboring Algeria said on Wednesday AQIM -- al Qaeda’s North African wing -- was noticeably ramping up its presence in Libya and that a prolonged conflict across its desert frontier risked destabilizing the Sahel region further.
Asked about reports of an al Qaeda presence, Gemal said: "This is bizarre. Gaddafi was the first one to use this claim and (now) it seems the world has picked it up."
The rebels say they are fighting for an end to decades of oppression under one of the world’s longest serving leaders and have no Islamist militant agenda.
The inconclusive battlefield situation, defections from Gaddafi’s coterie and the plight of civilians ensnared in fighting or running out of food and fuel has spurred a flurry of diplomacy in pursuit of a peaceful solution.
But such efforts have made little headway, with the rebels adamant that Gaddafi step down while the government, aware of the limitations of Western intervention, has offered concessions hinting at democratization but insists he stay in power.
War in the vast North African state ignited in February when Gaddafi tried to crush pro-democracy rallies against his 41-year rule inspired by uprisings that have toppled or endangered other autocrats across the Arab world.