Forces loyal to Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi launched attacks yesterday on a key town rebels seeking to topple him have vowed to defend, as leading nations began talks on the crisis.
Rebel fighters in Ajdabiya, Libya, said four shells had fallen west of the town, while a former officer who defected from Qaddafi’s air force said there had been air strikes.
Ex-colonel Jamal Mansur also said that rebels had regained a foothold in Brega, 80km to the west, which the Libyan army said it had captured on Sunday.
Ajdabiya guards vital roads north along the coast to the rebel capital of Benghazi and east across the desert to the oil port of Tobruk, which has given the insurgents control of eastern Libya up to the Egyptian border.
The lightly-armed rebels have been pushed back about 200km by superior forces in recent days and are now only 170kms from Benghazi, Libya’s second city with a population of about 1 million.
Mansur said Ajdabiya could become “another Zawiyah,” referring to the town 40km west of Tripoli which was reconquered by pro- Qaddafi troops last week after bitter and deadly fighting.
The rebels braced for new attacks knowing they could expect little quarter from Qaddafi’s troops equipped with heavy weaponry and warplanes to which they have virtually no answer.
Libyan army spokesman Colonel Milad Hussein told reporters in Tripoli those troops were “marching to cleanse the country” of insurgents, whom he called “rats and terrorists.”
However, state television in Tripoli said yesterday that former Libyan soldiers like Mansur, who defected to the rebels, would be pardoned if they surrender to government forces.
Mansur admitted the rebels were seriously ill-equipped and said that they could turn to urban guerrilla warfare.
“We are asking the West to carry out targeted strikes on military installations” as proposed by France, he said as US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrived in Paris for talks with G8 counterparts.
Clinton was also to meet members of Libya’s opposition national council in Paris yesterday or Today, a US official said.
The G8 powers — Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the US and Russia — were to discuss proposals for a no-fly zone to ground the warplanes pounding Libya’s rebel forces.
Britain and France have a draft resolution in hand for the UN Security Council to enforce a no-fly zone over Libya, and French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe on Sunday vowed to step up efforts to get the measure approved.
Russia has appeared reluctant and the US, Germany and Italy have taken a cautious line on intervention, but the move was backed on Saturday by the 22-nation Arab League.
A no-fly zone plan is to be put to NATO today, according to Clinton, but alliance member Turkey voiced opposition yesterday to intervention, which Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said could have dangerous consequences.
In other developments Russia slapped an entry ban yesterday on Qaddafi and froze all financial operations involving the Libyan leader’s family and top security aides involved in the violent crackdown.
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UNILATERAL: The move from China’s aviation authority comes despite a previous 2015 agreement that any changes to flight paths would be done by consensus The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday slammed Beijing for arbitrarily opening the M503 flight route’s W121 connecting path, saying that such unilateral conduct disrespected the consensus between both sides and could destabilize the Taiwan Strait and the wider region. The condemnation came after the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) earlier yesterday announced it “has activated the W121 connecting path of the M503 flight route,” meaning that west-to-east flights are now permitted along the path. The newly activated west-to-east route is intended to “alleviate the pressure caused by the increase of flights,” China’s state-run Xinhua news agency quoted China’s Taiwan Affairs Office
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