Libyan rebels yesterday retreated from another key town under heavy shelling from government forces as Muammar Gaddafi loyalists swept closer towards the main opposition-held city of Benghazi.
But the rebel commander, Col Gaddafi’s former Interior Minister, vowed to defend the “vital” next town.
A lightning counter-offensive over the past week has pushed ragtag rebels out of Mediterranean coastal towns, allowing the regime to wrest back momentum against a month-long uprising to end Col Gaddafi’s four-decade grip on power.
Col Gaddafi’s forces are “marching to cleanse the country” of insurgents, military spokesman Colonel Milad Hussein told a news conference in Tripoli.
“Our raids are forcing the terrorists to flee. We have liberated Zawiyah, Uqayla, Ras Lanuf and Brega, and the army is advancing to liberate the rest of the regions.”
France, which alone has recognised the rebels’ interim national council as the rightful representative of Libya, called for speeding up the push for a no-fly zone, as demanded on the ground in rebel-held areas.
Dozens of rebels fled east out of Brega towards Ajdabiya, the last rebel-held town before Benghazi which the Libyan opposition has made its de facto capital just 170 kilometres away.
Libyan state television declared Brega “purged of the armed gangs.”
General Abdel Fatah Yunis, who resigned as Interior Minister soon after the rebellion began in mid-February, vowed to defend Ajdabiya.
“Ajdabiya is a vital city. It’s on the route to the east, to Benghazi and to Tobruk and also to the south. Ajdabiya’s defence is very important,” he told reporters in Benghazi.
“It’s a vital city. We will defend it.”
“It is very important and we feel he (Col Gaddafi) will have serious logistical problems and serious difficulties for supplying his troops, because they’re getting extended all the time,” he argued.
“It is a vital city and we will defend it if they are capable of reaching it,” he added. Asked whether regime forces might simply go round the town and forge on to besiege Benghazi, he snorted: “Not even in his dreams!”
Pressed by sceptical reporters who saw untrained and badly-led rebel fighters withdrawing from positions around Brega in disarray, bombarded by government artillery, Yunis insisted the rebel heartland was safe.
“All the eastern cities are involved in this revolution and all the people are armed, as well as the armed forces,” he said.
“In the unlikely event that the armed forces fail he’s going to have serious difficulties to deal with the armed population. We do hope that he extends his lines, because he’s going to have serious logistical problems,” he said.
“Your agencies and some of your colleagues seem to exaggerate his forces.”
Gen. Yunis said the rebels were holding around 70 prisoners of war and alleged they had revealed to their captors serious abuses being committed by Col Gaddafi’s Tripoli-based regime against its own forces.
“They are handcuffed to their tanks, they are sent to fly without parachutes,” he claimed.
“These soldiers, as soon as they find any kind of resistance, they surrender because they are under duress, they are under pressure. They feel that they are dispensable, so they don’t have cause to continue this fight.” From Ajdabiya there is also a straight desert road to the oil port of Tobruk, which to date has given rebels full control over the east up to the Egyptian border, a vital transit route for supplies from abroad. The Doctors Without Borders charity warned that rebels were being denied medical help in government-held areas and urged access to treatment for the wounded.
“In several conflict zones, such as Zawiyah and Misrata, large numbers of people are cut off from any external assistance, while critical medical needs and shortages of medicine and materials are reported,” it said.
Zawiyah, just west of the capital, fell to Col Gaddafi’s forces on Friday after bitter fighting, while in Misrata, a city east of Tripoli which continues to hold out against attacks that last week killed at least 21 people, residents reported renewed firing yesterday.
The US-based Human Rights Watch said Libyan security forces have unleashed a wave of arbitrary arrests in Tripoli, “brutally suppressing all opposition”.
In the capital, state television said foreign firms were being asked to resume oil exports, claiming its ports are safe despite the conflict which broke out on February 15 and the flight of tens of thousands of expatriate workers.
Oil giant Total said on Friday that the unrest had slashed Libya’s output by 1.4 million barrels a day to under 300,000. Libya’s largest market is Europe.
Col Gaddafi has repeatedly charged that Al-Qaeda was behind the uprising, and senior Qaeda militant Abu Yahya al-Libi, himself a Libyan, warned of the heavy price of a rebel defeat, in a videotape posted on jihadist websites on Sunday.
Libyan insurgents “must carry on with their revolution, without hesitation or fear, in order to push Gaddafi into the abyss,” said Libi, considered one of Al-Qaida’s top ideologues.
Rebel morale was boosted by an Arab League decision on Saturday to support a no-fly zone over Libya and to make contact with the insurgents’ national council in Benghazi.
But apart from defectors from Gaddafi’s army, the rebels have no military experience, few heavy weapons and are virtually powerless against air attack.
Declaring that Col Gaddafi had lost all legitimacy, the Arab League urged the UN Security Council “to assume its responsibilities” and “take the necessary measures to impose an air exclusion zone for Libyan warplanes”.
The White House welcomed the decision and vowed to “advance our efforts to pressure Gaddafi, to support the Libyan opposition, and to prepare for all contingencies, in close coordination with our international partners.”
But Washington has stopped short of giving full support for the no-fly zone which is being pushed for by Britain and France.