Libyan rebels regain territory and main oil terminals

LIBYAN rebels pushed further west last night to retake more territory abandoned by Muammar Gaddafi’s retreating forces, which have been weakened by Western air strikes.

Emboldened by the capture of the strategic town of Ajdabiyah with the help of foreign warplanes on Saturday, the rebels have regained the initiative and are back in control of all the main oil terminals in the eastern half of the North African country.

“There are no Gaddafi soldiers here. We control all the town,” rebel fighter Youssef Ahmed, 22, said in the town of Bin Jawad, 525km east of Tripoli.

Bin Jawad is the westernmost point the rebels reached in early March, before they were pushed back by Gaddafi’s better- equipped forces to their stronghold of Benghazi.

Rebels said Gaddafi loyalists had retreated westwards and they planned to push on toward Sirte, the Libyan leader’s heavily defended home area on the Mediterranean coast.

“We want to go to Sirte today. I don’t know if it will happen,” said 25-year-old Marjai Agouri as he waited with another 100 rebels along the main coastal road outside Bin Jawad.

They were armed with three multiple rocket launchers, six anti-aircraft guns and around a dozen pickup trucks mounted with machine guns.

Rebel gains put them back in control of all the main oil terminals in the eastern half of Libya — Es Sider, Ras Lanuf, Brega, Zueitina and Tobruk.

In Ras Lanuf, battle debris was scattered around the eastern gate, which had been hit by an air strike.

At least three trucks of Gaddafi’s forces were smouldering. Ammunition, plastic bags of rations left behind and a tin bowl with a half eaten meal on the ground suggested Gaddafi’s forces had beaten a hasty retreat.

Mansour al-Breik, a 20-year-old shopkeeper now turned fighter, said: “The air strikes were from midnight to 3am.”

On the way into Ras Lanuf witnesses saw a bus loaded with Gaddafi soldiers who had been taken prisoner, escorted by a machinegun-mounted pickup.

As foreign media passed, rebels chanted: “Sarkozy, Sarkozy, Sarkozy” in reference to the French president and air strikes by coalition states including France to protect civilians.

As the frontline shifted toward the heartland of Gaddafi’s support, government forces pounded Misrata in the west with tank, mortar and artillery fire on Saturday, and resumed shelling yesterday after a pause that followed an air strike.

A Misrata resident told Reuters by phone the humanitarian situation in the city is very bad, but rebels said they would fight until the city was freed from Gaddafi.

“Misrata has been under siege for 38 days,” another resident, Sami, said: “Not much food, water is a rarity and people are obliged to use wells to get water. We have problems with medicines.”

Rebels in Misrata said Gaddafi was putting all his weight into attacking Misrata so he could control the whole of the west of the country after losing all the east.

Libyan government spokesman Mussa Ibrahim told reporters in the capital Tripoli that Gaddafi was directing his forces but appeared to suggest the leader might be moving around the country so as to keep his whereabouts a mystery.

Gaddafi himself has not been shown on television since he made a speech on Wednesday and his sons Saif al-Islam and Khamis — who had spoken regularly to foreign media — have been out of sight even longer.