Rebels in battle to retake oil port city

LIBYAN rebels battled forces loyal to Colonel Muammar al-Gaddafi along the Mediterranean coast west of Tripoli yesterday, fighting back into the important western oil port of Zawiya.

A Libyan rebel spokesman said it was the first major fighting in the city since government troops crushed opposition forces there in March.

Guma el-Gamaty, a London-based spokesman for the rebels' national council, says the opposition fighters were in control of a large area on the western side of the city.

A rebel fighter who fled the city at the end of March said "there are clashes inside Zawiya itself".

The rebel, who identified himself only as Kamal, said, "The fighters are back in the city," and that he had spoken with them. Zawiya had been the closest city to the capital Tripoli to fall into rebel hands.

Apparently prompted by the Zawiya clashes, Libyan soldiers sealed off parts of a crucial coastal road leading from Tripoli, the capital, west of the Tunisian border. Zawiya sits about 30 miles west of Tripoli.

The coastal highway approaching Zawiya from the capital was clogged with soldiers and loyalist gunmen with assault rifles yesterday, some patrolling the road, others manning checkpoints.

Roadside shops were shuttered. The only vehicles on the road were white jeep-style vans used by Gaddafi's soldiers.

The coastal road is a chief artery from neighbouring Tunisia for the delivery of food, fuel and medicine to the Gaddafi regime, which is under a naval blockade, Nato-enforced no-fly strictures and continuing airstrikes by the western alliance in support of the rebel uprising.

But even though an increasing number of countries in the international community have sided with the rebels, Gaddafi has shown no sign of giving up power.

On Friday, Turkey's prime minister said his country has offered Gaddafi "guarantees" if he were to leave Libya but has yet to receive a response.