NATO warplanes bombed Muammar Gaddafi's hometown of Sirte on
Sunday as forces opposed to the fallen strongman closed in on his last major
bastion of support.
The fugitive Gaddafi's exact
whereabouts where still not known and it was possible he was still in hiding in
Tripoli five days after it fell to rebel forces and his 42-year-old reign
collapsed.
In the capital, the rebel
leadership sought to establish control after days of confusion and sporadic
skirmishing with the remnants of Gaddafi's forces.
But the stench of rotting
bodies and burning garbage still hung over the city and food, water and other
supplies were running short, indications that despite the euphoria of victory,
plenty of challenges lay ahead.
A NATO spokesman in Brussels
said that foreign warplanes -- which have played a crucial role in backing the
rebels during the six-month civil war -- had struck at Sirte over the past
three days including Sunday.
"We're paying close
attention to what's happening in Sirte because we know that there are remnants
of the regime that are there," he said.
Libyan forces also closed in
Sirte, Gaddafi's birthplace, from the ground and said they would seize it by
force if negotiations for its surrender failed.
One commander said his forces
were within 100 km (60 miles) of Sirte from the east and others were advancing
from the west.
Reuters reporter Maria
Golovnina, traveling east from Tripoli along the coastal highway,
saw tank transporters carrying Soviet-designed T-55 tanks in the direction of
Sirte.
Rebels in Misrata, about 250
km west of Sirte, said they had seized about 150 brand new Gaddafi tanks from
an abandoned military base in Zlitan and were preparing to deploy them if
Gaddafi supporters in Sirte did not surrender.
Jamal Tunally, a rebel
military commander in Misrata, told Reuters: "The front line is 30 km from
Sirte. We think the Sirte situation will be resolved peacefully, God
willing."
"Now we just need to
find Gaddafi. I think he is still hiding underneath Bab al-Aziziyah like a
rat," said Tunally, referring to Gaddafi's compound in Tripoli which was
overrun by rebels on Tuesday.
Colonel Ahmed Bani, military
spokesman of the National Transitional Council (NTC) in the eastern city of
Benghazi, said the negotiations over Sirte would go on as long as necessary but
either way it would liberated in "a matter of days."
Gaddafi, 69, is on the run
and the fear among his foes is that he intends to lead an insurgency against
them.
NTC officials also rejected
any idea of talks with Gaddafi, saying he was a criminal who must be brought to
justice.
"We did not negotiate
when we were weak, and we won't negotiate now that we have liberated all of
Libya," NTC information minister Mahmoud Shammam told a news conference.
The Associated Press earlier
quoted Gaddafi's spokesman, Moussa Ibrahim, as saying Gaddafi was still in
Libya and wanted to discuss forming a transitional government with the NTC.
NTC officials say Gaddafi, his
son Saif al-Islam and his spy chief should be tried in Libya, although they are
wanted by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity.
The NTC and its Western
backers are acutely aware of the need to prevent Libya collapsing into the kind
of chaos that plagued Iraq for years after the U.S.-led invasion of 2003.
The de facto government, whose
leaders plan to move to Tripoli from Benghazi this week, is trying to impose
security, restore basic services and revive the energy--based economy.
But in the aftermath of
victory, many corpses have been found, some of slain Gaddafi soldiers, others
the victims of killings in cold blood.
A Libyan official said 75
bodies had been found at the Abu Salim hospital, which was caught up in heavy
fighting, and another 35 corpses were found at the Yurmuk hospital.
The possibility that rebel
fighters executed captured Gaddafi soldiers would pose an image problem for the
NTC.
Military spokesman Bani said
there was concern for the fate of 40,000 prisoners who he said had been
detained by Gaddafi's forces and who were still unaccounted for. It was
possible some were being held in underground bunkers in Tripoli that rebels had
so far been unable to locate, he said.
GOOD OMENS
In good omens for economic
recovery, officials said a vital gas export pipeline to Europe had been
repaired and Libya's biggest refinery had survived the war intact.
In the west, Tunisian
authorities reopened the main border crossing into Libya, restoring a supply
route for Tripoli, after Gaddafi forces were driven out on Friday.
That should help relieve a
looming humanitarian crisis in the city, where food, drinking water and medicines
are scarce.
Trucks loaded with food and
other goods were already moving across the Ras Jdir crossing toward Tripoli,
about two hours' drive away.
The streets of the capital
were quiet after sporadic overnight gunfire and explosions in a city.
Some residents ventured out
to hunt for water, food and fuel. And in Martyrs' Square, known as Green Square
in the Gaddafi era, traffic police reappeared in crisp white uniforms,
directing cars amid a sea of bullet casings.
"I came back to work on
Friday. Life is beginning to come back to normal," said one policeman,
Mahmoud al-Majbary, 49."
Tripoli residents queued for
bread or scoured grocery shops for food. Many took a stoical view of their
plight.
"This is a tax we pay for
our freedom," said Sanusi Idhan, a lawyer waiting to buy food.
Aymen Mohammed poured water
into plastic containers for his neighbors. "There are many people here who
don't have water so we're filling the bottles from our well," he said.
The NTC issued messages urging
electricity workers to get back to work and efforts to pay the salaries of
public sector workers were underway.
The NTC hopes to gain access
soon to hundreds of millions of dollars of Libyan assets frozen abroad. It also
needs to get oil and gas revenue, normally 95 percent of exports, flowing
again.
Bani said the gas pipeline to
Europe had been repaired and gas woulod start flowing again soon, he said.
Libya's largest oil refinery
at Ras Lanuf on the Mediterranean coast is intact despite fighting that had
raged nearby and staff are preparing to restart operations at the 220,000
barrel per day plant, the general manager told Reuters.
(Additional reporting by Mohammed
Abbas and Maria
Golovnina in Tripoli, Robert Birsel,
Alex Dziadosz and Emma Farge in Benghazi; Writing by Alistair Lyon and Angus MacSwan)
Source : Reuters
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