Libyan rebels closed in on Moamer Gaddafi’s hometown of Sirte from both east and west on Sunday, a senior military commander said, as the insurgents scrambled to restore essential services to Tripoli. Rebel forces moved to within 30 kilometres (18 miles) of Sirte from the west and captured Bin Jawad 100 kilometres to the east, the rebel commander in Misrata, Mohammed al-Fortiya, told AFP.
“We took Bin Jawad today (Sunday)” on the eastern front, and “the thwar (rebel fighters) from Misrata are 30 kilometres from Sirte” in the west, Fortiya said. Rebels pushing west from the oil hub of Ras Lanuf had been stuck for four days outside Bin Jawad, a key town on the coast road of the Gulf of Sirte, as Gaddafi’s forces kept up a defiant resistance.
Sirte is the elusive Gaddafi’s last bastion after rebels smashed his forces in Tripoli and seized his Bab al-Aziziya headquarters, and now the insurgents are focusing on capturing the Libyan leader. Although his whereabouts remain a mystery, there is widespread speculation that Gaddafi is holed up in Sirte, 360 kilometres east of Tripoli, among tribal supporters there. Fortiya said talks were under way with tribal leaders in Sirte for its surrender, adding that only tribal leaders were involved, and that to his knowledge no direct contact had been made with Gaddafi himself.
“We are negotiating with the tribes for Sirte’s peaceful surrender,” he said.
But a spokesman for the rebel National Transitional Council (NTC), Mahmud Shammam, warned that negotiations for Sirte’s peaceful handover would not be open-ended. “The negotiations will not go on for ever,” he said. “The talks are still going on… We would like to unify Libya very quickly.” In the rebel bastion of Benghazi, military spokesman Colonel Ahmed Omar Bani told reporters more than 10,000 prisoners have been freed from Gaddafi’s jails since the fall of Tripoli but almost 50,000 others are still missing. “The number of people arrested over the past months is estimated at between 57,000 and 60,000,” he said. “Between 10,000 and 11,000 prisoners have been freed up until now… so where are the others?”
