Libyan interim government forces have captured a district in Sirte after fierce battles that further raised concerns about the dire humanitarian situation in former leader Muammar Qaddafi’s besieged hometown.
Government forces, who had for weeks been pinned down by artillery and rocket fire on the eastern edges of Sirte, were able to advance several kilometers into the city, capturing the southern district of Bouhadi.
A Red Cross convoy delivered oxygen and other urgently needed medical supplies to the Ibn Sina hospital on Monday after an earlier attempt was aborted because of heavy fighting.
Photo: Reuters
“The situation on the ground was very tense, with ongoing fighting,” Red Cross delegate Hichem Khadraoui said. “Under such conditions, we had to limit ourselves — after obtaining clearances from all the parties concerned — to bringing in the most urgently needed humanitarian aid.”
Aid agencies say they are concerned about the welfare of civilians inside Sirte, one of the last pro-Qaddafi bastions left in the country, who are trapped by the fighting and running out of food, water, fuel and medical supplies.
Concerns about the humanitarian crisis have focused on the Ibn Sina hospital. Medical workers who fled Sirte say patients were dying on the operating tables because there was no oxygen and no fuel for the hospital’s generators.
Medical staff outside Sirte who had treated wounded civilians fleeing the fighting said they had been told the corridors were full of patients and that treatment was being given only to pro-Qaddafi fighters or members of his tribe.
A military spokesman for the interim government, the National Transitional Council (NTC), told a television channel that Qaddafi’s son Al-Mutassim Billah was hiding in the hospital.
“Our revolutionaries [in Sirte] are fighting those who are accomplices of the tyrant in crimes against the Libyan people,” Ahmed Bani told Doha-based Libya TV. “They are a group of killers and mercenaries led by Mutassim Qaddafi, who is now in the Ibn Sina hospital in Sirte to avoid being hit, according to newly received information.”
NTC forces in the east of Sirte unleashed barrages of tank, artillery and anti-aircraft fire until after sundown. NATO aircraft flew overhead.
NTC commanders said their fighters in Sirte were waging street battles with Qaddafi supporters in a residential area situated 2km from the city center.
“We are surrounding them from all sides. We have orders to call in from all fronts and use all kinds of weapons,” NTC fighter Saeed Hammad said.
Medical workers at a field hospital near Sirte said four NTC fighters were killed and 39 were wounded on Monday.
On the way in to Bouhadi, the streets were deserted apart from some burned-out cars and tank shell casings. Billboards which had shown images of Muammar Qaddafi were torn down.
Libyans ended Muammar Qaddafi’s 42-year rule in August when rebel fighters stormed the capital. Muammar Qaddafi and several of his sons are still at large and his supporters hold Sirte and the town of Bani Walid, south of Tripoli.
De facto Prime Minister Mahmoud Jibril said on Monday the NTC would set in motion the process of democratic elections once Sirte was captured, instead of waiting until the whole country is under their control.
A city of about 75,000 people, Sirte holds symbolic importance. Muammar Qaddafi transformed his birthplace from a sleepy fishing town into Libya’s second capital.
At his instigation, parliament often sat in Sirte and he hosted international summits at the Ouagadougou Hall, a marble-clad conference center he had built in the south of the city.
Muammar Qaddafi’s supporters are too weak to regain power, but their resistance is frustrating the new rulers’ efforts to start building post-Qaddafi Libya.
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