Rebels capture Tripoli gateway town

Libyan rebel forces have seized control of a major mountain town which is a strategic gateway on the road to the capital, Tripoli, a rebel spokesman said today.

Gomma Ibrahim said the town of Gharyan fell after brief clashes before Muammar Gaddafi’s troops withdrew. He said residents welcomed rebel fighters as they entered.

Gharyan is about 80km south of Tripoli in Libya’s western Nafusa Mountains. The mountain range is now largely under rebel control, and the town is key because it lies on the road north directly to the capital.

Rebels have launched a major new offensive from the Nafusa Mountains, trying to move into the coastal plain west of Tripoli.

The rebels have been trying for weeks to take Gharyan, and Nato air strikes have hit Gaddafi's forces in the area several times.

Gomma Ibrahim, a spokesman for rebels in the Nafusa area, said rebel fighters clashed for about four hours with the remains of regime forces in the town - mostly young fighters and mercenaries – who then withdrew.

The capture solidifies the rebels’ flank as they push ahead with a new offensive launched from further west in the Nafusa range, pushing down into the coastal plain where Gaddafi’s forces have been concentrated. The rebels are hoping to take several cities along the coast before moving on to Tripoli.

Rebel commander Fathi el-Ayeb said his fighters were 10 miles (15km) away from Gaddafi-held Zawiya, a key target in the offensive.

He said scouts who returned from Zawiya claimed the local residents there were waiting for the rebels to reach the city’s outskirts to join their fight against Gaddafi.

Dozens of Libyan families have been taking advantage of the fighting to flee Tripoli and head into the Nafusa Mountains.

They were making their way through desert back roads which appeared to be less guarded amid the fighting between rebels and Gaddafi’s forces near Bir Ghanam, 50 miles (80km) south-west of Tripoli.

The rebels said they registered 55 families that had fled Tripoli in the past three days for the mountains. Many were originally from the west but had escaped to Tripoli when the fighting broke out in the mountains months ago.

One of those on the road, Sassi Ahmed, a 47-year-old social studies teacher, said he left Tripoli with his wife and six children because the situation in the capital was “very dangerous and frightening”, with no gas or electricity.

He told The Associated Press that the family piled up their belongings on to their car and slipped out of the city in a convoy with at least five other families.

Another man, who would not give his name because he feared for relatives who remained in Tripoli, said Gaddafi’s troops first turned him back from one road but he managed to find another way, travelling with his wife and two daughters.

Libya’s revolt began in February, with the rebels quickly wresting control of much of the eastern half of the country, as well as pockets in the west. The conflict later settled into a stalemate with the rebels failing to budge the front lines in the east since April.

The assault from Nafusa is an attempt to circumvent the deadlock.

At the main front in the east, rebels fighting Gaddafi’s forces claimed they captured part of a strategic port city of Brega that has repeatedly changed hands in the six-month-old civil war.