Gaddafi's forces routed in oil port battle

Rebel forces routed troops loyal to Muammar Gaddafi in a fierce battle over an oil port, scrambling over the dunes of a Mediterranean beach through shelling and an air strike to corner their attackers.

While they thwarted the regime’s first counter-offensive in eastern Libya, opposition leaders still pleaded for outside air strikes to help them oust the long-time dictator.

The attack on Brega, a strategic oil facility 460 miles east of Gaddafi’s stronghold in the capital Tripoli, illustrated the deep difficulties the Libyan leader’s armed forces – an array of militiamen, mercenaries and military units - have had in rolling back the uprising that has swept over the entire eastern half of Libya since February 15.

In Tripoli, Gaddafi warned against US or other Western intervention, vowing to turn Libya into “another Vietnam” and saying any foreign troops coming into his country “will be entering hell and they will drown in blood”.

At least 10 anti-Gaddafi fighters were killed and 18 wounded in the battle for Brega, Libya’s second- largest petroleum facility, which the opposition has held since last week. Citizen militias flowed in from a nearby city and from the opposition stronghold of Benghazi hours away to reinforce the defence, finally repelling the regime loyalists.

The attack began just after dawn yesterday, when several hundred pro-Gaddafi forces in 50 trucks and SUVs mounted with machine guns descended on the port, driving out a small opposition contingent and seizing control of the oil facilities, port and airstrip. But by afternoon, they had lost it all and had retreated to a university campus five miles away.

There, opposition fighters besieged them, clambering from the beach up a hill to the campus as mortars and heavy machine gun fire blasted around them, according to an Associated Press reporter at the scene.

They took cover behind grassy dunes, firing back with assault rifles, machine guns and grenade launchers. At one point, a warplane struck in the dunes to try to disperse them, but it caused no casualties and the siege continued.

“The dogs have fled,” one middle-aged fighter shouted, waving his Kalashnikov over his head in victory after Gaddafi’s forces withdrew from the town before dusk. Car horns honked and people fired assault rifles in the air in celebration.

For the past week, pro-Gaddafi forces have been focusing on the west, securing Tripoli and trying to take back nearby rebel-held cities. But the regime has seemed to struggle to bring an overwhelming force to bear against cities largely defended by local residents using weapons looted from storehouses and backed by allied army units.

Pro-Gaddafi forces succeeded over the weekend in retaking two small towns. But the major western rebel-held cities of Zawiya and Misrata, near Tripoli, have repelled repeated, major attacks – including new forays against Zawiya yesterday.

In a speech to chanting and clapping supporters in Tripoli, Gaddafi vowed to fight on “until the last man and woman. We will defend Libya from the north to the south”.

He lashed out against Europe and the US for its pressure on him to step down, warning that “thousands of Libyans will die” if US and Nato forces intervened in the conflict.

“We will distribute arms to two or three millions and we will turn Libya into another Vietnam,” he said.

In Benghazi, Libya’s second-largest city and the stronghold of the rebellion in the east, a self-declared “interim government council” formed by the opposition called on nations to carry out air strikes on non-Libyan African mercenaries that Gaddafi has used in his militias to put down the uprising.

Council spokesman Abdel-Hafiz Hoga said the council urged strikes on the “strongholds of the mercenaries .... used against civilians and people”.

Meanwhile actress Angelina Jolie issued a humanitarian appeal for the tens of thousands of people affected by the fast-unfolding emergencies in Libya and Ivory Coast.

Jolie, a United Nations refugee agency goodwill ambassador, added her voice to calls by UN agencies to protect civilians displaced by the conflict in Libya, including thousands of refugees and asylum seekers still inside or trying to leave the country for neighbouring Egypt and Tunisia.

The agencies are also calling on all sides to protect the human rights and safety of civilians trying to flee clashes in Ivory Coast, many of them crossing the border into Liberia.

“As we witness these newest crises unfold in west and north Africa, it is critical that all parties respect the fundamental right of people in danger to flee to safety, whether civilians caught in conflict in their own country or refugees and asylum seekers caught in new conflicts,” Jolie said.

“All I’m asking is that civilians be protected, and not targeted or harmed.”

Jolie issued her appeal from Afghanistan, where she was meeting refugees struggling to survive and adjust after years in exile.