Libyan rebels on Thursday pulled most of their fighters back from an assault on a gateway to Tripoli and set their sights on the oil city of Brega, as NATO dismissed charges of having killed more than 1,100 civilians.
And as the insurgent campaign on the capital from mountains to the southwest continues apace, Russia's special envoy to Libya was quoted as saying he believes Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi has a 'suicide plan' to blow up Tripoli if it falls.
'Yesterday, we got to within six kilometres of Asabah, but most of our forces have returned' to Gualish, where rebels reversed a bid by loyalist forces on Wednesday to recapture the desert hamlet, said local commander Abdel Majid Salem.
Asabah is strategically located 80 kilometres south of the capital, serving as the last barrier between the rebels and the garrison town of Gharyan.
Salem said the bulk of the rebels had returned to 'secure the area' around Gualish, some 17 kilometres further south, but that some remained outside Asabah.
On Wednesday, loyalists caught rebels off guard and attacked Gualish, which the insurgents captured a week earlier, and seized nearly all of it. But reinforcements poured in from surrounding villages and drove the loyalists out, chasing them up the road toward Asabah.
At least eight rebels were killed and around 30 wounded in Wednesday's fighting, said doctors at the hospital in Zintan, the key rebel base in the mountains.
The eight killed, all but one of them young men, were buried on Thursday in Zintan, an AFP correspondent said. Mourners loosed off Kalashnikov automatic weapons fire as the bodies were lowered into the graves.
'We are so sad to lose these young men but we expected it. This is war and we have to do this, either we defend our homes and our children or Gaddafi's forces will come in,' said Ahmed Ammar, an oil worker in his 50s.
In eastern Libya, rebels were poised on Thursday to launch an offensive on the oil town of Brega, hoping to dislodge dug-in loyalist troops, rebel military sources said.
Continued from page 1
'We are preparing to enter Brega. The attack will come soon,' said one rebel official.
Brega, nestled at the southeastern tip of the Gulf of Sirte, has changed hands multiple times during Libya's four-month-old civil war.
'We have been focused on the west of the country, but now we will move,' said another rebel military source who also asked not to be named.
Gaddafi's regime said late on Wednesday that it was seeking to prosecute NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen in Libyan courts for 'war crimes' over the alliance's air strikes since the end of March.
'As NATO secretary general, Rasmussen is responsible for the actions of this organisation which has attacked an unarmed people, killing 1,108 civilians and wounding 4,537 others in bombardment of Tripoli and other cities and villages,' prosecutor general Mohammed Zekri Mahjubi told foreign journalists in Tripoli.
Rasmussen himself dismissed the accusations, insisting great care was taken to avoid civilian casualties.
'I completely dismiss these accusations,' he told journalists in The Hague. 'We are extremely careful and cautious in identifying military targets and avoid civilians casualties.'
On Thursday, the alliance reported that 50 strike sorties had been carried out the previous day, with key hits including command and control centres, storage facilities, tanks, artillery pieces, missile launchers and armed vehicles.
Gaddafi is wanted by The Hague-based International Criminal Court for atrocities committed in a crackdown by his forces on pro-democracy protests that erupted in mid-February.
The US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, said at a Washington news conference with the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, on Wednesday that Gaddafi's 'days are numbered' after signs of rebel advances in the field.
Lavrov played down differences with Hillary over Libya, saying: 'We have less misunderstanding with the United States than with some European countries.'
On Thursday, Russian daily Izvestia quoted Kremlin envoy Mikhail Margelov as saying he believes Gaddafi has a plan to blow up Tripoli if it is taken by the rebels.
'The Libyan premier told me: if the rebels seize the city, we will cover it with missiles and blow it up,' Margelov was quoted as saying in reference to a meeting last month with Baghdadi al-Mahmudi.
Margelov met the Libyan prime minister on June 16 in Tripoli after holding talks in Benghazi earlier the same month.
Source : New Age
