SHALGHOUDA – Libyan rebels said they had captured part of the oil town of Brega yesterday while their forces in the west pushed toward Zawiyah, trying to get within striking distance of Muammar Gadafy’s capital.
Col Muammar Gadafy is clinging to power despite a near five-month Nato air campaign, tightening economic sanctions and a lengthening war with rebels seeking to end his 41-year rule.
The two sides have been battling for months over Brega, 750km east of Tripoli.
The rebels see securing the town as a tipping point in the nearly six-month-old war and hope to resume oil exports from there as quickly as possible.
The rebels have seized large swathes of the north African state but are deeply divided and have yet to march on Tripoli.
Yesterday they reached the village of Bir Shuaib, 25km (15 miles) from Zawiyah, which has unsuccessfully risen up against Col Gadafy twice this year.
It lies less than 50km west of Tripoli, on the main road to Tunisia, which has been a lifeline for Libya but has begun to crack down on rampant smuggling.
“We’ve gone past Nasr village and right now we’re about 25km from Zawiyah,” said Faris, a rebel fighter.
Rebels prevented reporters from reaching the front to see for themselves.
Rebels in the western mountains do not operate as a single force, as each town has its own command, but when they join forces for major operations, they can muster a few thousand men.
Their force is poorly trained and short of heavy weaponry – despite a French arms drop earlier this year – and most analysts do not think they are capable of capturing Tripoli.
In an effort to pile economic and military pressure on Col Gadafy, more countries are set to announce next week that they will free frozen assets for the rebels, a British official has said.
The senior official yesterday said steps taken by the international community meant Col Gadafy and his supporters were nearing a “tipping point” when they would be forced from power.
“While it is hard to predict when this will end, it is easy to see the pressure is building on Gadafy and it is only a matter of time before he’s forced to leave power,” the official said.
Tightening the economic noose around Col Gadafy, Tunisia said yesterday that its troops were patrolling fuel stations to curb the flow of smuggled petrol into neighbouring Libya.
International sanctions and the effects of Libya’s civil war have disrupted normal supplies of fuel to parts of the country under Col Gadafy’s control, but huge volumes of petrol are instead being smuggled across the Libyan-Tunisian border.
“The armed forces are now conducting checks at fuel stations in the south of Tunisia . . . so that neither Tunisians nor Libyans can fill up with large quantities,” Tunisian defence ministry official Mokhtar Ben Nasr said.
“These checks are aimed at preventing the smuggling of diesel and gasoline to Libya.”
The western battle is one of three widely separated rebel fronts against Gadafy forces. In the east around the ports of Misurata and Brega, fighting has been bogged down in recent weeks while the western rebels have advanced.
– (Reuters)