Troops loyal to Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi launched counterstrikes yesterday to try to take back strategic towns from rebel forces, while intense automatic gunfire reverberated around the capital.
The resilience of Qaddafi’s forces in the face of the widespread insurrection and their ability to counter-attack will increase fears that Libya is heading for a protracted civil war.
While Qaddafi’s troops attacked and heavy fighting ensued, a government spokesman claimed a series of swift victories.
Shooting erupted in Tripoli just before daybreak, with machinegun volleys, some of them heavy caliber, echoing across the city of 2 million people, followed by the sound of ambulance sirens, pro-Qaddafi chants and a cacophony of car horns.
“These are celebrations because government forces have taken control of all areas to Benghazi and are in the process of taking control of Benghazi,” Ibrahim said, referring to Libya’s rebel-controlled second-largest city situated in the east.
“Everything is safe. Tripoli is 100 percent under control,” he said, but he advised against going to see the celebrations. “I would like to advise you not to go there for your safety.”
While Benghazi remained firmly in rebel hands, government troops backed by air power pushed rebels out of the town of Bin Jawad which they had captured on Saturday, to the oil port city of Ras Lanuf, 660km east of Tripoli.
One fighter returning wounded from the frontline to Ras Lanuf was asked what he had seen. He replied: “Death.”
At Ras Lanuf hospital, Heitham Gheriani said at least 15 wounded had arrived, hurt in fighting near Bin Jawad. One French journalist was shot in the leg, he said. Four rebels were seriously wounded and unlikely to survive, he said.
However, the rebels said they had shot down a helicopter in the fighting. Three rebel fighters speaking at Ras Lanuf said they had seen the helicopter crash into the sea.
State television said government forces had also retaken the coastal cities of Zawiyah and Misrata, to the immediate west and east of Tripoli.
A resident in Misrata insisted the city was still under rebel control and a spokesman for the insurgents in Zawiyah said they had repulsed a fresh government attack yesterday after fighting off two armored assaults the day before.
In Tripoli, Qaddafi loyalists were nevertheless jubilant over the reports of cities taken back by the regime and fired weapons in the air and brandished posters of Qaddafi.
“Libya is united. We will fight these forces that are trying to ruin the country. These forces are backed by outside powers,” said Salem Ghazy, a Tripoli businessman.
BRITISH SOLDIERS
In related news, Britain yesterday refused to confirm a Sunday Times report that British SAS soldiers and a diplomat were being held in Benghazi, but revealed that a “small British diplomatic team” was in Libya’s second city.
The newspaper said the SAS unit, reportedly up to eight men, were captured along with the diplomat they were escorting through the rebel-held east and who was seeking contact with opponents of Qaddafi.
“We can neither confirm nor deny the report,” a Foreign Office spokeswoman told reporters.
The defense ministry said it did not comment on the special forces, while British Secretary of State for Defence Liam Fox told BBC television: “I can confirm that a small British diplomatic team is in Benghazi ... We are in touch with them, but it would be inappropriate for me to comment further.”
The newspaper said the uninvited appearance of the SAS alongside the diplomat “angered Libyan opposition figures who ordered the soldiers to be locked up in a military base.”
Opponents of Qaddafi “fear he could use any evidence of Western military interference to rally patriotic support for his regime,” the weekly broadsheet added.
The newspaper said that according to Libyan sources, the SAS soldiers were taken by rebels to Benghazi, held by the opposition, and hauled up before a senior figure.
Meanwhile, 49 Bangladeshi migrant workers evacuated by sea from Libya to the Greek island of Crete jumped ship during the night, Greek authorities said yesterday, leaving three dead, 14 missing and many others hospitalized.
Almost a dozen Greek coast guard and navy vessels, a military helicopter and fishing boats were scouring the waters off the coast of Crete in search of the missing, the Greek mercantile affairs ministry said.
The evacuees had been on board the Ionian King, which docked late on Saturday in the port of Souda after sailing from Tripoli with 1,288 evacuees from Libya, most of them Bangladeshi nationals.
The men used a rope to lower themselves from the ship into the sea during the night, the ministry said, in an apparent attempt to avoid being sent home after arriving in Crete.
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