Fresh blasts rocked Tripoli on Sunday after veteran Libyan leader Moamar Gaddafi vowed never to give in to mounting calls to go into exile despite a new offensive by rebels seeking to oust him. At least 13 explosions were heard before and just after 1 am (2300 GMT Saturday). An AFP journalist was unable to say immediately what the targets had been.
State television reported that “the colonialist crusader aggressor” had raided civilian and military sites in the Ain Zara district and in Tajoura in the eastern suburbs. The blasts came just hours after Gaddafi had insisted in a defiant speech that he would never quit his homeland. “They are asking me to leave. That’s a laugh. I will never leave the land of my ancestors or the people who have sacrificed themselves for me,” he said in a loudspeaker address to supporters in Zawiyah, west of the capital. “I’m ready to sacrifice myself for my people, and I will never quit this land sprinkled with the blood of my ancestors who fought Italian and British colonialists,” he said. “These rats have taken our people hostage in Benghazi, Misrata and the western mountains, using them as human shields,” Gaddafi said of the rebels’ eastern stronghold and their two enclaves in the mainly government-held west.
“Five million armed Libyans will march on them and liberate the occupied towns as soon as the order is given.” Libya’s rebels on Saturday suffered their bloodiest day yet in the offensive to wrest control of Brega from Gaddafi’s troops, as medics said the death toll had risen to at least 12.
Nine people were killed on Saturday and 79 wounded as loyalist landmines began to vie with Grad rockets to ramp up the casualties, according to a list from the hospital in nearby Ajdabiya. Rebels said their steady advance on the key refinery town was slowed by the discovery of defensive trenches that had been filled with flammable chemicals by the retreating loyalist forces.
After a small rebel reconnaissance unit punched through into Brega late on Friday before falling back, a rebel commander said troops were now moving “slowly but surely” towards it from east, north and south. It was not clear what kind of chemicals were being used, but Brega is home to a large petrochemical facility that produces a range of oil by-products. At a hospital in Ajdabiya, Dr Ahmed Dinari said many of the casualties were caused by landmines rather than heavy artillery. “We have had five more injuries this morning, all of them from mine explosions,” he said. Lying prone in “Bed 2,” 19-year-old Ali Saleh said he had been in the central rebel column when his armoured personnel carrier hit a mine.
“We were very close to Brega at around 3 am (0100 GMT). Then we got instructions from NATO to fall back and as we were falling back the vehicle hit a mine, destroying the chain track.” He was suffering from shock and a lightly damaged knee. Sagezli said 250 mines had been uncovered so far. The alliance said that on Saturday it hit one tank, five armed vehicles, a multiple rocket launcher and another rocket launcher in and around Brega.
In raids east of Tripoli, NATO-led aircraft took out three radar, a surface-to-air missile launcher and a military storage facility, the alliance added. Southwest of the capital, rebel fighters exchanged rocket and machine-gun fire with Gaddafi’s forces early on Sunday both in the Nafusa Mountains and in the plains below around Bir Ayad, a key junction on the road to Tripoli, AFP correspondents reported. The rebels’ senior commander for the region, Mokhtar Farnana, said they were consolidating their grip on the territory they already held for fear of loyalist counter-attack.
“The most important thing is to keep hold of the territory we have captured and to make it safe before making further attacks,” Farnana told AFP. “We will not allow Gaddafi’s forces to retake places we have captured.”
