Gaddafi spits defiance amid rumours
August 15, 2011 - 2:24PM

Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi spat defiance at opposition forces and NATO amid rumours he was preparing to flee the country and as rebels made advances in several towns, especially in the west.

The veteran leader predicted a swift end for "the rats" and the "coloniser", referring to the rebels and NATO, in an audio message on Libyan television, extracts of which were published by Libyan news agency JANA.

"The end of the coloniser is close and the end of the rats is close. They (the rebels) flee from one house to another before the masses who are chasing them," Gaddafi declared in what the television said was a live broadcast.

"The coloniser and its agents can now only resort to lies and psychological warfare after all the wars with all the weapons have failed," Gaddafi said as rumours circulated on Twitter and other media about his imminent departure into exile.

Much of the message, his first in several weeks, was inaudible due to a "technical breakdown", according to the television station.

The veteran leader called on his supporters to resist and to "prepare for the battle to liberate" the towns held by the rebels, as the insurgents said they had advanced in western towns including Zawiyah, Sorman and Gharyan.

The television broadcast what it said were live images of the Green Square in the heart of Tripoli where hundreds of backers of the regime were assembled brandishing portraits of the "guide", as Gaddafi is known, and Libyan flags.

Government spokesman Mussa Ibrahim meanwhile said the regime's armed forces were capable of retaking the towns and districts where the rebels have made advances in recent days.

"Our mujahedin forces are capable of exterminating these gangs," he told a news conference reserved for the local press.

Quoted by JANA, Ibrahim added that pro-Gaddafi forces had Sunday repulsed a new rebel offensive on Zawiyah.

Rebels had on Saturday entered the town 40km west of Tripoli but the regime played down the importance of the attack, which Ibrahim said was carried out by a few dozen fighters.

South of the rebel town of Misrata, 200km east of the capital, the rebels had consolidated their positions in Tuarga after taking control of it on Friday and where they said they faced only some pockets of resistance.

But Ibrahim said pro-Gaddafi forces had "retaken control of the town and killed most of those from the Misrata-based gangs who advanced on Tuarga".

The government spokesman admitted that the rebels had entered the town of Gharyan in the Djebel Nefussa region "in order to spread terror... but there is no need for concern." Government forces would, he said, take back the town "in the next few hours".

Ibrahim also acknowledged "problems" in Sorman, 70km west of Tripoli, where "clashes" were taking place. But "hundreds of volunteers" backed by the army were "handling the case of Sorman", he said.

Libya's rebels said earlier they suffered many casualties on Sunday as they advanced on Gaddafi's forces in the western port of Zawiyah, after losing a tank and four fighters in a "friendly fire" air strike.

"Our forces are in control of the western and southern gates of Zawiyah, and have pushed three kilometres into the city," Bashir Ahmed Ali, commander of the battalion fighting to wrest the town from loyalist forces, told AFP.

"Regime forces are in control of the east and main centre of the town, where snipers are stationed on top of many buildings. We have suffered many casualties from the snipers," he said, without giving a precise number.

"There are also snipers in the residential areas, where some families are virtual hostages in their own homes," he said.

Government spokesman Ibrahim had told reporters late Saturday that Zawiyah, a strategic town 50km west of Tripoli and the last barrier before the rebels close in on the capital itself, was under complete government control.

The representative of Zawiyah in the National Transitional Council (NTC), the rebels' de facto government, said there were fears the regime would send in reinforcements to crush their advance.

"We fear the arrival of reinforcements from Tripoli," particularly by sea, he said in the rebel capital of Benghazi in the east.

"But if Zawiyah falls (to the rebels), we will be able to control everything east of Tripoli to the Tunisian border. This is the beginning of the end for Gaddafi," he added.

REPORT FROM THE FRONTS

By KAREEM FAHIM
Published: August 14, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/15/world/africa/15libya.html

BENGHAZI, Libya — After a period of political turmoil, fighters opposing Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi advanced on several fronts on Sunday, seizing ground in the strategic city of Zawiyah that placed them on Tripoli’s doorstep and threatening to cut off an important supply line for the colonel’s loyalists.

The incursion late Saturday into Zawiyah, joined by fighters inside the city, promised to bolster the flagging morale of the rebel movement, which is still reeling from the assassination of a top military leader.

A rebel military spokesman reported that the rebels had also taken control of Surman, farther west along the road to Tunisia; that claim could not immediately be confirmed.

Clashes were reported near the Ras Ajdir border crossing with Tunisia, the spokesman said, as well as in Gheryan, a city in the Nafusah Mountains that straddles another important route connecting Tripoli with Sabha, a Qaddafi stronghold in the south.

In the east, the rebels on Sunday continued their assault on Brega, an oil city where they are trying to force a contingent of Qaddafi fighters out of the city’s manufacturing district. Colonel Qaddafi’s soldiers were said to remain in control of important oil facilities in both eastern and western Libya; the rebels, who have said they are afraid to damage such installations, have had a difficult time dislodging opponents from them.

It was not clear whether the rebel gains reported on Sunday resulted from a coordinated attack effort, from NATO bombing or simply from the mounting pressures weighing on Colonel Qaddafi’s loyalists, who are increasingly short of fuel, food and ammunition as the international effort to end the conflict has gained momentum.

It was also far from certain whether the rebels could hold the ground they gained, something they have often had trouble doing in the past.

On Sunday evening, there were reports that Qaddafi snipers were still operating in Zawiyah, 20 miles west of Tripoli. Reuters, quoting a rebel soldier, said that Qaddafi loyalists were still in control of the city’s oil refinery.

NATO reported that on Saturday, its forces struck two tanks in the vicinity of Zawiyah. The rebels who then stormed the city said they faced little resistance, and by Sunday morning, the tricolored rebel flag was flying from a shop near the town’s central market, Reuters reported. Video images broadcast on Al Jazeera showed triumphant rebel fighters rallying in the city beneath a bridge, with artillery shelling audible in the distance.

The roads through Zawiyah and Gheryan are the last overland supply routes into Tripoli that are still open. If the rebels gain control of both roads, they may find themselves in the difficult position of managing a siege of a city still filled with civilians.

Rebel leaders worked over the weekend to quiet the squabbles that had flared up in their ranks after the killing of Gen. Abdul Fattah Younes, who had defected from Colonel Qaddafi’s army in February and become the rebels’ senior military leader. At the front lines in Brega on Friday, there was little sign of the most troubling rift to emerge, the one between the officers in the army that General Younes commanded and the leaders of the volunteer fighters known as the Union of Revolutionary Forces.

The rebel authorities have recently allowed reporters to visit the front lines, after months of restricting such visits. In interviews, fighters there spoke of coordinated advances involving special forces soldiers and the civilian volunteers, and they seemed untroubled by the lack of a central leadership figure. They said they took orders from their brigade commanders and trusted that their leaders were speaking to one another.

The rebels near Brega fired rockets from positions in a valley as their tanks, rarely seen in action, fired from the edge of a nearby hill. But at the sound of incoming rocket fire, the rebel fighters panicked, jumped in their trucks and drove away from the front lines.