SIRTE, Libya: Libyan transitional government forces said they had cornered Moamer Qadhafi loyalists in the centre of the deposed leader’s hometown on Monday, but many desperate civilians were still trying to flee the fierce street fighting.
The protracted battle for Sirte, built up by Qadhafi as a showpiece town on the Mediterranean coast, has raised concerns that civilian casualties could breed long-term hostility making it hard for the National Transitional Council (NTC) to unite the vast North African state once the fighting is over. “Qadhafi’s forces are cornered in two neighborhoods near the sea, an area of about 2-km square, but there is still resistance,” Abdul Salam Javallah, commander of NTC units from eastern Libya, told Reuters on the front line of their attack. “We are dealing with them now with light weapons because there are still families inside,” he said. Shortly after he spoke, a group of three women, three small children and two male civilians emerged from a house on the front line. They were searched by the rebels and hurriedly got into a car and drove off waving the V-for-victory sign. Another family of three women and one man, stopping at a checkpoint as they fled Sirte, said they had been trapped in their house by the fighting. “We didn’t know where the strikes were coming from. Everyone is being hit all day and all night. There is no electricity and no water. There is nothing. There is not one neighbourhood that hasn’t been hit,” said one of the women who gave her name as Umm Ismail. NTC commanders say they are only using light weapons, but government tanks have also moved into road intersections and pounded Qadhafi positions, while pick-up trucks mounted with heavy weapons as well as foot soldiers darted out of cover to fire wildly up ahead. At times, NTC units came under fire from their own side, a hazard becoming more acute as the rag-tag groups of government volunteers attacking from the east and west close in on one another. Most of the government forces attacking Sirte are from other towns and do not have much help from the inside as they did they when they captured the capital Tripoli on Aug. 23 and ended 42years of one-man rule by Qadhafi after six months of civil war.Many civilians from Sirte are also fighting alongside the remnants of Qadhafi’s army in the belief the outsiders will commit atrocities once they capture the city of 75,000 people. Qadhafi is believed to be hiding in the desert far to the south. “Qadhafi’s troops know their way around,” said one government fighter in a brief lull in the fighting. “We don’t know the city. We don’t even know what’s in the next street.”NTC forces have struggled to take Sirte and a few other leftover bastions of Qadhafi loyalists, and this has impeded efforts to set up effective government nationwide and restart oil production, the lifeblood of the Libyan economy. Several Libyan analysts also say they are worried fault lines are opening up between the Islamist-run Tripoli Military Council, which has nominal control over the city and is also believed to be backed by Qatar, and groups loyal to interim Prime Minister Mahmoud Jibril, a Western-trained technocrat. The interim government sent out text messages on Monday urging their fighters to report to military bases and join the national army. Concern is rising in the capital about potential conflict among armed groups that converged on Tripoli in August and have stayed on to demand stakes in a future government. “Eighty percent of Sirte is now under our control,” said Omar Abu Lifa, a commander of government forces attacking Sirte from the west. NTC forces have repeatedly claimed to be on the point of victory in Sirte, only to suffer sudden reversals at the hands of a tenacious enemy fighting for its life, surrounded on three sides and with its back to the sea. In just one field hospital to the east of the city, doctors said they had received 17 dead and 87 wounded from Sunday’s fighting. There were dozens more casualties elsewhere.
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