Incident

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Incident

Heavy exchanges near key western Libyan town

17 June 2011 23:01 (UTC +04:00)

Baku â€“ APA. Libyan rebels and pro-Gaddafi forces exchanged heavy artillery fire near the western city of Zlitan on Friday as the rebels tried to push deeper into government-held territory east of the capital, APA reports quoting â€œReutersâ€.
A Reuters team in Dafniya, on the outskirts of the rebels’ western bastion of Misrata, described rebels firing artillery and rocket launchers with a range of about 20 km (miles). Rebels said they were aiming for tanks and munitions in Naimah near Zlitan.
"We had a strategy to finish everything today but some of the fighters think it’s a game," a rebel unit commander called Mohammed Ali told Reuters. "They shot when they weren’t supposed to shoot and they have ruined it," he said after rebels took cover at the main Dafniya front from a heavy mortar barrage.
Warplanes could be heard in the skies above, although it was unclear whether there had been air strikes.
Zlitan, just 160 km (100 miles) from Tripoli, is the next major town on the Mediterranean coast road to the capital. Capturing it would be a major victory.
In Misrata, rebel spokesman Ahmed Hassan said 10 civilians had been killed and another 40 wounded when Gaddafi forces shelled the city. The report could not be immediately verified.
The exchanges were the heaviest in the area since last week, when 31 rebels were killed.
At a field hospital in Dafniyah, ambulances arrived with at least five seriously wounded rebel fighters.
The rebels have said they will not attack Zlitan because of tribal sensitivities, but are recruiting fighters from the town and waiting for the residents to rise against Muammar Gaddafi.
NATO planes resumed bombardments of Tripoli on Friday with six loud explosions ringing out in the south of the city.
The rare daytime strikes, which hit the capital before noon, sent columns of thick black smoke into the sky.
A few hundred people filled the capital’s Green Square waving green revolutionary flags and chanting pro-Gaddafi slogans following Friday prayers.
STRAINS
The rebellion erupted four months ago to the day in the eastern city of Benghazi. NATO intervention has been going on for nearly 13 weeks, longer than many of its backers expected, and strains are beginning to show within the alliance.
But French Military spokesman Thierry Burkhard suggested the rebels were homing in on Gaddafi’s stronghold of Tripoli.
"The opposition forces seem to have taken the ascendancy on Gaddafi’s troops, which shows just how much attrition they are enduring," he told reporters on Thursday.
The rebel advance, he said, was "essentially in the West and in a belt they are now developing around the Tripoli region."
Rebel advances toward Tripoli have been slow, while weeks of NATO strikes pounding Gaddafi’s compound and other targets have failed to end his 41-year-old rule.
Rebel forces are fighting Gaddafi’s troops on two other fronts: in the east of the country around the oil town of Brega and in the Western Mountains southwest of Tripoli.
Juma Ibrahim, a rebel spokesman in the Western Mountains town of Zintan, said Gaddafi loyalists were massing in Gharyan, about 120 km (90 miles) southwest of Tripoli.
"Battles continued today at the Tekot area (near Nalut) between pro-Gaddafi forces that used Grad missiles and tanks to shell the positions of rebels," he said, adding NATO strikes in the last 48 hours had been "very helpful."
Ibrahim said Gaddafi forces were also besieging the world heritage-listed old city of Gadamis, some 600 km southwest of the capital on the Tunisia and Algerian border.
"(They) ... have destroyed some Islamic historic ruins in the city ... They were palaces and forts located in the city’s old quarter," he said.
Accounts from Gadamis could not be independently verified because access for reporters is limited.
Rebels have made slow but important gains in the past few weeks in the mountains and near Misrata, bringing the front closer to Tripoli from the east and southwest.
Rebels said late Thursday an attack on their positions near Ajdabiyah in the east wounded at least 16 fighters in what may have been a "friendly-fire" NATO air strike.
NATO said it was investigating the incident.
RED LINE
One of Gaddafi’s sons Saif al-Islam told an Italian newspaper on Thursday elections could be held within three months and his father would step aside if he lost, but that proposal was swiftly rejected by the rebel leadership and the United States.
Libyan Prime Minister Al-Baghdadi Ali Al-Mahmoudi appeared in any case to throw the apparent concession into question, saying Gaddafi was not concerned by "any referendum."
A visiting Russian envoy to Tripoli said the Libyan leadership had reiterated that Gaddafi’s departure was a "red line" that could not be crossed.
Mikhail Margelov, President Dmitry Medvedev’s special representative for Africa, said in Tunis on Friday Mahmoudi had also told him representatives of Gaddafi’s government were in touch with rebels in Norway, Germany and France.
"The prime minister wanted to tell me that they have a sort of communication channel with the Transitional National Council," Margelov said.
The rebels have said they will not negotiate with Tripoli until Gaddafi and his sons step down.
Gaddafi has called the rebels "rats" and says NATO’s campaign is colonial aggression to steal Libya’s oil.