Fierce street fighting erupted yesterday between regime fighters and former Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi’s remaining diehards in Sirte, the toppled Libyan leader’s hometown and last bastion, a correspondent said.
In the desert oasis of Bani Walid, the new government flag was raised after it was liberated on Monday.
National Transitional Council (TNC) fighters suffered at least two deaths and dozens of injuries within the first 40 minutes of the battle exploding mid-morning, with the streets of Sirte reverberating with the sound of heavy gunfire, rockets and mortars.
Photo: Reuters
They were running in their hundreds through the streets of the last two neighborhoods still in the hands of the loyalists, the Dollar and Number Two.
Pickup trucks brought the wounded back to a field hospital opened on the edge of the neighborhood, with a reporter counting at least 35 injured.
The bodies of two fighters hit directly with mortars were brought to the clinic wrapped in blankets, which were still smoldering.
“They are shooting at us from everywhere, with snipers, mortars and RPGs,” one fighter, Tahar Burzez, said. “It is brutal inside. We are being shot from everywhere.”
US filmmaker Matthew van Dyke, who took up arms with the rebels after he was released in August from six months in Qaddafi’s notorious Abu Salim prison, was in the thick of yesterday’s fighting on the eastern side of Sirte.
“I think a lot of fighters are also getting hit by what could be friendly fire,” because fighters were also shooting from the west side, he said.
In Bani Walid, the overall commander of NTC forces in the city, Musa Yunis, said all resistance from loyalist forces had ceased by late on Monday.
“Qaddafi’s troops left their vehicles behind and even changed into civilian clothing so they would be hard to find,” he said.
Saif al-Lasi, a commander of the Zliten Brigade, one of the NTC units that took part in the final assault launched on Sunday, said “the city of Bani Walid has been completely liberated.”
Cries of Allahu Akhbar (God is great) and bursts of celebratory machinegun fire filled the desert air over the center of Bani Walid, as NTC troops feted their capture of the loyalist bastion after a six-week siege. The jubilant fighters hoisted the red, black and green flag of the new government over mosques and other buildings, tearing down the all-green emblem of the ousted regime.
NTC fighters, who have laid siege to the Mediterranean coastal city of Sirte for more than a month, took heart Monday from the flight of several relatives of leading Qaddafi regime officials.
Among the escaping civilians were the mother and a brother of Qaddafi’s spokesman Mussa Ibrahim, a senior NTC commander said.
“These are families of regime officials. There is Mussa Ibrahim’s mother and brother among them,” said Wessam bin Hamaidi, as seven cars sped out of the battleground neighborhoods.
Meanwhile, US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton thanked Malta for evacuating US nationals from Libya at the start of the rebellion during a visit to the island yesterday. The Maltese government “went the extra mile” to evacuate foreign nationals, Clinton said following talks with Maltese Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi.
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