Snipers loyal to Muammar Gaddafi held back government forces
trying to capture his hometown on Thursday and the deposed leader warned the
heads of the developing world who have recognized Libya's new rulers that they
would face a similar fate to his own.
Hiding in a mosque and a
building that was once Gaddafi's favorite venue for international summits,
loyalists blocked the advance of government forces, making forecasts of a quick
end to the battle for Sirte look premature.
Thousands of civilians in the
town of Sirte are caught up in the fighting. Red Cross workers who were able to
reach the town's hospital described patients sheltering from the gunfire in the
corridors and a lack of staff to treat them.
Taking Sirte is of huge
symbolic importance to Libya's new rulers, and until it is captured they are
putting on hold plans to start rebuilding the oil-producing North African
state.
Once a sleepy fishing town and
Gaddafi's birthplace, Sirte was transformed by the former Libyan leader into
the country's second capital.
Libya's parliament often sat
in Sirte and summit meetings were staged in a marble-clad conference center in
the south of the Mediterranean coastal city, from where fighters loyal to him
fired on the attacking forces on Thursday.
Commanders with the National
Transitional Council (NTC) have predicted they will have Sirte, which has a
population of 75,000, under their full control by the weekend.
They pledged that units on
Sirte's outskirts would be brought into the fight on Friday in a coordinated offensive.
An audio recording of Gaddafi
obtained by Reuters on Thursday from Syria-based
Arrai television was the first sign of life from him since September 20, when
the same station last aired a speech by him.
"If the power of
(international) fleets give legitimacy, then let the rulers in the Third World
be ready," Gaddafi said in an apparent reference to NATO's support for NTC
forces.
"To those who recognize
this council, be ready for the creation of transitional councils imposed by the
power of fleets to replace you one by one from now on," said Gaddafi, who
was in power for 42 years.
De facto Prime Minister
Mahmoud Jibril said that Gaddafi was hiding in southern Libya under the
protection of tribes, crossing occasionally into Niger, and government forces
expected to pinpoint his whereabouts soon.
"Security is the most
important thing for him. To specify where he is exactly even for ten hours is
very difficult. I hope within the coming days we will be able to confirm where
he is located exactly," Jibril said in on a visit to Baghdad where he
discussed renewing Libyan diplomatic ties with Iraq.
'HARD-CORE FANATICS'
Gaddafi loyalists who pulled
back to Sirte when they lost control of other cities are putting up fierce
resistance. They have nowhere else to go.
"A lot of them are
veterans, the hard-core fanatics. There's also mercenaries (and) people
fiercely loyal to Gaddafi," said Matthew Van Dyke, an American who is
fighting with the anti-Gaddafi forces.
"They are not going to
give up," said Van Dyke, who said he came to Libya seven months ago to
visit friends, was arrested by Gaddafi forces, and joined the fighting on his
release.
"It's going to take a
while. (Because of) the snipers, we are going to take a lot of
casualties."
Anti-Gaddafi fighters on
Thursday had advanced just over one kilometer (miles) into Sirte from the
luxury hotel on the Mediterranean shore that had earlier marked the front line.
They were hunkered down in a
neighborhood of villas and residential blocks from where they were using
machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades to try to capture loyalist
positions.
They set up firing positions,
fortified with sandbags, next to the apartment block windows. But they were
drawing heavy fire: buildings were riddled with bullets and their balconies had
been partially demolished by heavy-caliber rounds.
Anti-Gaddafi fighters used binoculars
to watch for muzzle flashes from loyalist sniper rifles.
They said the snipers were
positioned in the minaret of a nearby mosque and in the Ouagadougou conference
hall.
That is the building where
Gaddafi, often decked out in elaborate traditional dress, would host summits of
African and Arab heads of state.
An NTC defense spokesman
quoted by Al Jazeera television said one of Muammar Gaddafi's son, Mo'attassem,
had left Sirte and fled south.
FRIDAY OFFENSIVE
The street-by-street fighting
was taking place on the northeastern corner of Sirte while anti-Gaddafi forces
on the western side of the city held back.
Commanders there were
bringing up tanks in preparation for what they said would be a coordinated
assault on both fronts.
With the NTC focus on Sirte,
Libya has been left in a political limbo. It has only a makeshift government
and in Tripoli rival armed militias are jockeying for power.
An NTC spokesman said council
chairman Mustafa Abdel Jalil would travel to Tripoli on Saturday to handle the
"delicate situation" in the capital.
The battle for Sirte has
exacted a high cost for civilians. They have been trapped, with dwindling
supplies of food and water and no proper medical facilities to treat the
wounded.
Many of Sirte's residents are
members of Gaddafi's own tribe. The NTC says there will be a place for them in
the new Libya, but the fighting has caused hostility that it likely to hamper
the new government's efforts to unite the country once the violence is over.
The International Committee of
the Red Cross (ICRC) said its team evacuated three wounded from Sirte's Ibn
Sina hospital, including a seriously injured nine-year-old girl.
"Today there were only a
few doctors left to treat war-wounded people in the Sirte hospital,"
Cordula Wolfisberg, an ICRC doctor who visited the hospital, said in a
statement.
"The hospital is packed
with civilians from the neighborhood, including many women and small
children."
Hajj Abdullah, in his late
50s, was at a Red Cross post on the edge of Sirte where food was being handed
out.
"My 11-year-old died from
the NATO rockets ... I buried him where he died" because it was too
dangerous to go to the cemetery, he said. "There are random strikes in the
city. People are dying in their houses."
He said many civilians were unable
to leave. "The ones who stayed behind are the poor and the weak."
(Additional reporting by Emad
Omar in Benghazi, Libya, Stephanie
Nebehay in Geneva,
Ahmed Tolba in Cairo, Lutfi abu Oun and Oliver Holmes in Beirut and Baghdad
newsroom; Writing byChristian
Lowe and Joseph Nasr;
Editing by Mark Heinrich)
Source : Reuters
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