Gaddafi seizes the heart of rebel stronghold - for now

Published on Wednesday 9 March 2011 17:41

AFTER some of the most bitter fighting of Libya's rebellion so far, troops loyal to Colonel Muammar al-Gaddafi took the main square of the city of Zawiya yesterday, residents said, but rebels who pulled back under heavy assault vowed to counterattack.

It was reported that several members of Col Gaddafi's forces, including a general and a colonel, were killed in house-to-house fighting that a local doctor said had claimed at least 40 lives and probably many more.

State television showed many dozens of what it said were loyalist demonstrators marching through the city of 290,000 located 30 miles west of Tripoli. They were holding pictures of Col Gaddafi and waving green flags.

Col Gaddafi's regime yesterday offered a bounty of about 350,000 to anyone who captured rebel leader and former justice minister Mustafa Abdel Jalil and handed him in. State TV denounced him as an "agent spy".

Rebels and residents in Zawiya earlier said army snipers were shooting at anything that moved and bodies lay unrecovered in the ruins of many buildings destroyed in air raids.

"We have pulled back and they are inside the square but we will attack them again and have it back," a rebel fighter said by telephone. "We will do that tonight. This is not the end."

He said the government forces had attacked rebels from the coast and from the west and south.

The doctor said he had seen at least 40 bodies, not counting dead in the streets, including old people, women and children.

It was not possible to verify the reports independently. Foreign reporters are not allowed anywhere near the city and attempts by some to enter Zawiya over the past few days have been blocked by the authorities.

The counter-offensive by Col Gaddafi, almost three weeks after an uprising began against him in eastern Libya, has halted the rebels' advance in the east and left others stranded in Zawiya and another western city, Misrata. Earlier in the day, a rebel fighter said that government forces controlled the main road and suburbs of Zawiya, which in the past three days has become a focal point of a two-front civil war to end Col Gaddafi's 41-year rule.

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"We can see the tanks. The tanks are everywhere," said a fighter named Ibrahim. "There were army snipers on top of most buildings, shooting anyone who dared to leave home. There are many dead people and they can't even bury them," he said. "Zawiya is deserted. There's nobody on the streets. No animals, not even birds in the sky."

A government spokesman in Tripoli said earlier yesterday that only a small group of rebels was still holding out.

"Maybe 30-40 people, hiding in the streets and in the cemetery. They are desperate," he said.

Khaeri Aboshagor, spokesman for the London-based Libyan League for Human Rights, said the town might prove hard to control. "If they have taken the square, the resistance might diminish. It's a symbolic place, and you could say whoever holds the square holds the town.

"But they will keep fighting," he said. "It's a very spread out town and you can't just hold it with 50 tanks and some pick-up trucks."

A Tunisian who crossed the border on the way from Tripoli to Tunis in mid-afternoon said the sound of explosions could be heard from Zawiya as he passed by the city.

"The road was okay until we got close to Zawiya. They've encircled the city and dug up the road leading to it so nobody can come in or out," he said.He said rebels had killed a high-ranking cousin of Col Gaddafi in fighting earlier in the week. "That's why he bombed the city. They wanted to retrieve the body and they did."

The heavy fighting has shut down one of Libya's biggest oil refineries, which is near the town, a refinery official said yesterday. "Heavy weapons have been fired nearby and we can't run the refinery under these conditions," he said.