Libyan fighting crosses border
Pro-Gaddafi forces shelled the town of Dehiba, in Tunisia, damaging buildings and wounding at least one resident, as a squad drove into the town in a truck chasing anti-Gaddafi rebels.
Tunisia summoned Libya’s ambassador to protest against the incursions.
Tunisian deputy foreign minister Radhouane Nouicer said casualties had been inflicted, including a young girl.
“We summoned the Libyan envoy and gave him a strong protest because we won’t tolerate any repetition of such violations. Tunisian soil is a red line and no one is allowed to breach it,” he said.
The Libyan troops were chasing rebels from the Western Mountains region who fled into Tunisia in the past few days after Gaddafi forces overran a border post they had earlier seized.
Tunisian border guards had shut down the border, were laying barbed wire and fortifying their positions.
Two Dehiba residents said shells had fallen on the town from pro-Gaddafi positions across the border.
While Dehiba was under fire, the rebels, who are fighting to end more than four decades of Gaddafi rule, announced they had recaptured the border post, having seized it a week ago.
It controls the only road link their comrades in the Western Mountains have with the outside world, making them rely otherwise on rough tracks for supplies of food, fuel and medicine.
The main crossing into Libya, in the north, remains firmly under Libyan government control.
Friday’s clashes marked the first time that government ground forces had crossed the border and entered a Tunisian town.
