Attackers shaken by ferocity of Gaddafi forces’ last stand

FORCES loyal to Muammar al-Gaddafi were yesterday still resisting an attack on the deposed Libyan leader’s home town with the ferocity of men who, in all likelihood, are making their last stand.

Fighting was focused on a roundabout to the east of Sirte city centre, where the forces of Libya’s new rulers, the National Transitional Council (NTC), were pinned down by sniper, artillery and rocket fire from the city’s defenders.

Yesterday afternoon, several hours into the battle, an NTC fighter left his unit a short way beyond the roundabout and came towards the rear to seek help. He was crying and in a panic.

“We need help, we need help,” he said to fellow fighters. “Some of our men are stuck inside and they are badly injured.”

One of the fighters he was appealing to tried to comfort him. No-one, though, went forward to help rescue his wounded comrades. The incoming fire was too heavy.

Col Gaddafi’s home town and the power base of his tribe, Sirte was always likely to be a tough place to capture.

Anti-Gaddafi officials say many of the most hardened Gaddafi loyalists who had been in other parts of the country fell back to Sirte, together with supplies of weapons and ammunition.

Those loyalists in the city are now surrounded. NTC fighters are positioned to the south, east and west. To the north is the Mediterranean Sea, where a Nato naval blockade makes escape unlikely.

At the roundabout, attackers moved up two tanks and 12 lorry-loads of infantry to try to break the deadlock. But the pro-Gaddafi forces seemed to have found the range of the tanks.

The NTC fighters, meanwhile, had to shelter behind metal shipping containers, unable to move because of sniper fire.

On the other side of Sirte, another set of NTC fighters had stopped fighting while their commanders tried to negotiate a truce with elders from Gaddafi’s tribe.

“They [pro-Gaddafi forces] have all sorts of stuff, from snipers to rocket-propelled grenades and rockets, everything, and they seem to be very close and accurate,” said Mohammed Faraj, an NTC fighter who was on a pick-up truck mounted with an anti-aircraft gun.

“Some shrapnel almost hit my truck. There aren’t enough fighters to back us up. There are only a dozen trucks. The snipers and fighters can see us … but we cannot see them,” he said.