Rebels are fighting battles in coastal cities on either side of the besieged Libyan capital Tripoli in a drive to topple Muammar Gaddafi after six months of war.
Mortar and rocket rounds crashed on Saturday into the centre of Zawiyah, a city on the coastal highway 50 km (30 miles) west of Tripoli that the rebels captured this week in one of the boldest advances of their uprising.
Shells struck the central hospital around dawn, blasting holes in the walls and inside were scenes of destruction. There was fighting around the hospital on Friday. In the central square, residents were burning and stamping on a green Gaddafi flag. “Gaddafi is finished. Civilians are starting to come back to the cities. Libya is finally free,” said one, who gave his name as Abu Khaled.
In a nearby alley, residents had gathered to stare at the bodies of two Gaddafi soldiers lying in the street. Gunfire and explosions could be heard in the distance.
The rebels’ capture of Zawiyah has transformed the conflict by cutting Tripoli off from its main road link to the outside world, putting unprecedented pressure on the 41-year rule of Gaddafi.
Rebels said the main Gaddafi force had retreated about 10 km east to the town of Jaddayim, close to Tripoli’s outskirts, and were shelling Zawiyah from there.
East of the capital, where fighting has been bloodier and rebel advances far slower, opposition forces fought street battles in the city of Zlitan but suffered heavy casualties, a Reuters reporter said. A rebel spokesman said 32 rebel fighters were killed and 150 wounded.
Gaddafi’s spokesman Moussa Ibrahim said late on Friday the government’s military retained the upper hand in both Zawiyah and Zlitan.
The sudden imposition of a siege around Tripoli has trapped its residents behind the front line and cut it off from fuel and food. The International Organisation for Migration said on Friday it would organise a rescue operation to evacuate thousands of foreign workers, probably by sea.
Some 600,000 of the 1.5 million to 2.5 million foreign workers in Libya fled the country early in the conflict, but many thousands stayed in Tripoli, which until this week was far from fighting and a two-hour drive from the Tunisian border.
INTELLIGENCE CHIEF’S HOUSE BOMBED: In a possible psychological blow to Gaddafi’s government, rebels said his former deputy Abdel Salam Jalloud had defected to rebel-held territory in the Western Mountains.
Jalloud was a member of the junta that staged a 1969 coup bringing Gaddafi to power and was once seen as Gaddafi’s second in command, but fell out of favour in the 1990s. It was not immediately clear what impact his defection would have.
