SIRTE – Libyan transitional government forces said they had cornered Muammar Gadafy loyalists in the centre of the deposed leader’s home town yesterday, but many desperate civilians were still trying to flee the street fighting.
The protracted battle for Sirte, built up by Col Gadafy as a showpiece town on the Mediterranean coast, has raised concerns that civilian casualties could breed long-term hostility, making it hard for the National Transitional Council (NTC) to unite the vast North African state once fighting is over.
“Gadafy’s forces are cornered in two neighbourhoods near the sea, an area of about 2km square, but there is still resistance,” Abdul Salam Javallah, commander of NTC units from eastern Libya, said on the front line of their attack. “We are dealing with them now with light weapons because there are still families inside.”
Shortly after he spoke, a group of three women, three small children and two male civilians emerged from a house on the front line.
They were searched and hurriedly got into a car and drove off waving the V-for-victory sign.
Another family of three women and one man, stopping at a checkpoint as they fled Sirte, said they had been trapped in their house by the fighting.
“We didn’t know where the strikes were coming from. Everyone is being hit all day and all night. There is no electricity and no water. There is nothing. There is not one neighbourhood that hasn’t been hit,” said one of the women who gave her name as Umm Ismail.
NTC commanders say they are only using light weapons, but government tanks have also moved into road intersections and pounded Gadafy positions, while pick-up trucks mounted with heavy weapons as well as foot soldiers darted out from cover to fire wildly up ahead.
At times, NTC units came under fire from their own side, a hazard becoming more acute as the rag-tag groups of government volunteers attacking from the east and west close in on one another.
Most of the government forces attacking Sirte are from other towns and do not have much help from the inside as they did when they captured the capital Tripoli on August 23rd and ended 42 years of one-man rule by Col Gadafy after six months of civil war.
Many civilians from Sirte are also fighting alongside the remnants of Col Gadafy’s army in the belief the outsiders will commit atrocities once they capture the city of 75,000 people. Col Gadafy is believed to be hiding in the desert far to the south. – (Reuters)