Libyan rebels searching for weapons and loyalists in captured city

Libyan rebels finally in control of a key stronghold of Muammar Gaddafi’s supporters were digging in searches for hidden weapons yesterday, a concrete sign that the long battle for Bani Walid was virtually over.

On a different front, revolutionary forces launched another assault on Col Gaddafi’s hometown of Sirte, hoping to dislodge his dug-in loyalists. Libya’s new rulers are holding up declaring victory and setting a timetable for elections until both centres are under their control.

In Bani Walid, field commander Said Younis said fighters were searching for high level Gaddafi loyalists who had escaped to the city, including Col Gaddafi’s son Saif al-Islam, one of his closest political aides and spokesman.

“Saif was seen was on Thursday. He was eating in a desert village close to the city,” Mr Younis said.

Bani Walid is a valley city protected by many steep mountains and valleys, where Gaddafi loyalist snipers took positions during the fiercest battles. Mr Younis said many loyalist fighters have fled to caves in the mountains.

In the garden of a house in Bani Walid, ten fighters dug a hole, revealing a cache of Kalashnikovs. “We’ve been finding weapons and ammunition hidden in people’s houses since we liberated the city, all over,” said Ayman Mahdi, as he dug.

Ahmed Saad, a field commander from Zlitan in the western mountains, who helped in Bani Walid forces take back their town, said forces were also searching for underground tunnels similar to those found under Col Gaddafi’s former Bab al-Aziziya compound in Tripoli.

“Prisoners we captured from Bani Walid admitted the existence of these tunnels where some of the loyalists may still be hiding,” Saad said.

Bani Walid’s centre was deserted. Buildings were pockmarked from bullets and rocket fire. The only doctors in the main hospital were foreigners.

While welcoming successes in Bani Walid, Libya’s new leaders have said they would declare liberation only after the fall of Sirte, whose capture would have symbolic value, as well as giving them control of ports.

In Sirte, the coastal hometown of the fallen dictator, revolutionary forces pushed in from the east yesterday to try to overcome last pockets of resistance.

But they were being forced to retreat in some places and taking intense fire from the dwindling force of Gaddafi loyalists boxed into a small area of the city.

At the eastern end of Sirte’s seafront, a reporter saw the spot where, an hour earlier, mortars had landed in a cluster of NTC fighters. Thirteen of them were killed in the incident, witnesses said.

“A lot of martyrs have fallen,” said Ahmed Al-Fitouri, of the NTC’s Libya Al-Hurra brigade. “The resistance is strong.”

In several places in the city, locations that a day earlier were firmly under the control of anti-Gaddafi fighters were too dangerous to access because of fire coming in from loyalist snipers.

On the edge of the “Seven hundred” district, the front line had not moved but the mood of optimism among NTC fighters had been replaced by despair at the mounting casualties.

Libya’s new rulers were so confident of their imminent victory in the town that NTC chairman Mustafa Abdel Jalil visited Sirte last week and was greeted by fighters firing triumphantly into the air.

But the NTC offensive – by mostly amateur fighters in a hotchpotch of volunteer units – has been hampered by a lack of co-ordination.

Mohammed Ismail, a field commander with the anti-Gaddafi Shohada al-Thaqil brigade, said his men decided to stop bombarding loyalists with artillery and were now instead using infantry to root out snipers house by house.