Gaddafi fights to regain control

Embattled Libyan leader launches fresh military and diplomatic offensive in a bid to cling to power

Rebels have wrested the entire eastern half of the country from Gaddafi’s grip  [EPA]

Muammar Gaddafi, the Libyan leader, has launched a fresh military offensive to retake some of the towns he lost control over the past 18 days.
Opposition to his decades-old rule has quickly swelled into a full-blown rebellion, but Gaddafi stepped up attacks on Friday. By Saturday morning, his forces broke through opposition defences in the city of Az Zawiyah after heavy shelling, eyewitnesses told Al Jazeera.
“There is a very tragic situation in the city,” Ahmed, a resident of Az Zawiyah, said. “We were expecting the world to intervene but they have let us down.”
“They are shooting at Libyan citizens and we have made up our mind that we will die,” he said, as Gaddafi’s forces continued to shell the town.
“It’s not a matter of oil or gas being taken out of our country, it’s human lives,” he said, pleading for the United Nations or the Arab League to step in to protect Libyan civilians.
At least 30 people were killed in fierce clashes in the town by Friday evening, as the two sides battled to control it. The death toll is climbing steeply, witnesses said.
“They have no mercy on civilians; the regime is attacking everything indiscriminately,” Ahmed said.
The loyalist forces attacked residential areas in the city, including from the sea.  Tanks and armoured vehicles had entered the centre.
“Most of those attacking us are mercenaries,” Lutfi Az-Zawi, a resident of the town, said.
Gaddafi’s security forces were using ambulances to kidnap wounded people, Human Rights Solidarity, a Geneva-based organisation, told Al Jazeera.
“Now with all the artillery, tanks and armored vehicles, fierce fight is ongoing and people are massacred in a way that we haven’t seen in Iraq,” Abdul-Fatah Az-Zawi, another local, told Al Jazeera.
Deadlock
The opposition has wrested the entire eastern half of the country from Gaddafi’s grip, along with several cities in the west close to the capital Tripoli, which is now symbolic to his defiance.
In the past few weeks, the opposition forces were able to fend off several assaults on the territory they control.
Members of Gaddafi’s government, diplomats, soldiers and even some of his closest allies have renounced their allegiance, and foreign leaders are becoming increasingly vocal in their calls for the besieged leader to step down.

Anti-Gaddafi protests had been planned on Friday afternoon in the capital, but Al Jazeera’s Anita McNaught reported that security personnel were out in force in sensitive parts of the city, and quickly surrounded people who appeared likely to demonstrate.

“Tripoli itself is a city almost completely locked down, electronic communications cut off for the previous 24 hours, shops shut, particularly nobody on the street,” she said.

Meanwhile, rebels claimed control of the strategic town of Ras Lanouf, after exchanging heavy shelling and machine gun fire with pro-Gaddafi forces on Friday.

There was no sign of soldiers loyal to Gaddafi in the town on Saturday, although the Gaddafi government’s denials  that the opposition controlled Ras Lanuf.

Rebel fighters opened fire on a helicopter flying overhead on Saturday, according to the Reuters news agency.

It was unclear what the rebels would do following the battle in Ras Lanouf. The next major town along the coastal road to the west is Sirte, Gaddafi’s home town.

The fighting underlined how both sides are pushing against the deadlock. Both sides are struggling to take new territory, Al Jazeera’s Jacky Rowland reported.

“The situation in the east of the country is really a stalemate, with anti-Gaddafi forces either unable or unwilling to advance further to the west and to try to take the fight closer to Gaddafi’s strongholds like Sirte and Tripoli,” she said.

“If you look at the rebel forces, they’re a rather undisciplined, orderly bunch,” she said.

For many of the anti-Gaddafi fighters, this is their first military experience.

Diplomatic battles

Not to be outdone on the diplomatic front, Gaddafi’s government on Friday asked that Ali Abdussalam Treki, a senior Libyan diplomat, be accepted as the country’s new envoy to the UN after the entire Libyan delegation in New York backed the pro-democracy protesters.

Gaddafi’s government made its first official reaction to sanctions announced by the UN, in a letter by Mussa Kussa, his foreign minister.

The letter called for the travel ban and assets freeze ordered against Gaddafi and his close aides “to be suspended until such time as the truth is established”.

Kussa demanded that the Security Council “stand up to the states that are threatening force against it.”

The foreign minister added that military action against Libya would be “inconsistent” with the UN charter and international law and “compromise a threat to peace and security in the region and indeed the whole world.”

Western powers say they are studying a no-fly zone against Libya to prevent attacks on civilians. Yet diplomats say that no official request for such action has been made to the UN Security Council.

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