LIBYAN CLASHES:REBELS AND forces loyal to Muammar Gadafy skirmished in Ras Lanuf last night but neither side was in full control of the largely deserted eastern Libyan oil town, rebel fighters said.
Government forces launched a fierce land, sea and air attack to retake the town, the site of a major oil terminal where rebels said storage tanks of a state-owned refinery were hit by an air strike. The government denied hitting the plant.
It was the second time this week an oil installation was hit. Rebels blamed government forces for another air strike that destroyed storage tanks and other facilities at Es Sider further along the coastal stretch where fighting has raged.
Rebels had advanced to the town of Bin Jawad about 60km west of Ras Lanuf a week ago, but have been driven back across the strip of desert and scrub. Though out-gunned, rebels have kept up stiff resistance.
“Ras Lanuf is a ghost town. There are skirmishes between rebels and Gadafy forces going back and forth,” said rebel captain Mustafa al-Agoury, adding that rebels were positioned on the east and Col Gadafy’s forces on the west of the town.
Neither side had full control, although Libyan state television said the town was cleared of “armed gangs” opposed to Gadafy and a spokesman for the rebel movement, Hamid al-Hasi, told Al Arabiya that Ras Lanuf was back in rebel hands.
Asked last night if rebels now controlled Ras Lanuf, rebel Ahmed Abdelmula Zayed said: “No. But God willing we will return.”
He was among a group of rebels who gave different accounts of the status, indicating the town’s uncertain fate. “They have been going back and forth with heavy bombardment. Gadafy’s philosophy is if you cannot rule it, he’s going to burn it. So he is bombarding Ras Lanuf indiscriminately from the sea, from the air and with tanks,” a media officer for the rebel movement in Benghazi, Mustafa Gheriani, said.
Last night, al Jazeera news television channel reported that warplanes had bombed rebel hideouts between Brega and Ras Lanuf, but gave no further details.
Dubai-based al-Arabiya cited an eyewitness and one of its correspondents as saying six rebels had been killed in Brega and eight in Ras Lanuf, but it did not link these deaths to an air raid by government forces
Daniel McLaughlin adds: Hungarian foreign minister Janos Martonyi, whose country holds the rotating presidency of the EU, said he expected the Arab League to support plans for a no-fly zone at a meeting today.
“The expectation is that they will support the no-fly zone under some conditions . . . The best thing, I think, would be that a concerted action would be planned and implemented with the countries of the Arab League,” Mr Martonyi said at a gathering of EU foreign ministers near Budapest yesterday. – (Reuters)