RAS JDIR – Troops loyal to Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi took the main square of Zawiyah on Wednesday, residents said, but rebels who pulled back under heavy assault vowed to counterattack. Al Jazeera satellite television said several members of Gaddafi’s forces, including a general and a colonel, were killed in fighting that a local doctor said had claimed at least 40 lives and probably many more. Libyan state TV showed many dozens of what it said were loyalist demonstrators marching through the city of 290,000 located 50 kilometres west of Tripoli. They were holding up pictures of Gaddafi and waving green flags.
Rebels and residents earlier said army snipers were shooting at anything that moved and bodies lay unrecovered in the ruins of many buildings destroyed in air raids. “We have pulled back and they are inside the square but we will attack them again and have it back,” a fighter told Reuters by telephone. “We will do that tonight. This is not the end.” He said the government forces had attacked rebels from the coast and from the west and south.
It was not possible to verify the reports independently. Earlier in the day, a rebel fighter told Reuters that government forces controlled the main road and suburbs of Zawiyeh, which in the past three days has become a focal point of a two-front civil war to end Gaddafi’s 41-year rule. “We can see the tanks. The tanks are everywhere,” said the fighter named Ibrahim. Meanwhile, a high-ranking member of the Libyan military landed in Cairo on Wednesday and embassy staff told Egyptian officials that he was carrying a message from Gaddafi.
The Falcon carrying the military official took off from a small Libyan airport and flew through Maltese and Greek airspace before landing in Egypt, according to Greek civilian and military officials.
