Libyan government forces assaulting the key city of Ajdabiya outflanked insurgents and cut the road north to the rebel capital of Benghazi yesterday, rebel sources said amid scenes of chaos in the town.
A French photographer, Laurent Vanderstock, told AFP he had seen troops loyal to Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi deployed on the road north of Ajdabiya having apparently got round between the city and the Mediterranean Sea.
An AFP reporter saw long lines at filling stations as civilians and some rebels tried to leave eastward to Tobruk, while others were erecting barricades in the streets.
At the same time, hundreds of refugees who escaped beforehand, both civilians and rebels, were arriving in Benghazi 160 kilometres away.
Libyan television claimed Ajdabiya had already fallen, as it has done on previous occasions, apparently to spook the rebels and residents of towns under attack.
Authorities in Tripoli kept up the psychological pressure with messages sent to mobile phones saying, “Soon Ajdabiya will be as safe and calm as it was”.
Earlier, fighters returning from the front some six kilometres to the west said they came under heavy bombardment, and the sounds of rocket fire became louder in the town centre.
Two dead people and three critically wounded were brought to the main hospital, medics said, and a dozen casualties arrived on the backs of trucks, most said to be victims of shelling.
Among the wounded was a little boy of about 10 wearing an orange jumper.
Armed men accompanied some of the wounded, sparking tense scenes as doctors accused them of abandoning their posts.
But the fighters insisted they were simply outgunned by Col Gaddafi’s forces, and it was unclear whether they would make a stand as their commanders had insisted.
In the central square rebels manned anti-aircraft guns pointing down the boulevard along which Col Gaddafi’s troops were expected to appear, as a lone young man brandishing a pre-regime flag screamed defiance.
Loudhailers urged fighters to head for the front as an air strike rocked the city, hitting a four-storey apartment block, damaging the ground floor and wounding six members of a family.
Relative Driss Jbel said three children aged between five and seven, two women and a man had been taken to hospital.
Wajid al-Hasi, 31, was killed when a bomb fell near his car, sending shrapnel smashing into the back and shattering his skull, witnesses and medics said.
Sherif Layas, 34, a marketing manager before taking up a gun to join the revolt, said “We are not afraid but we are unequal.”
Mr Layas, wearing a green military hat and fatigues, said he had no body armour and was running out of ammunition, with only one magazine-load left on his assault rifle.
He said that only citizen volunteers were defending Ajdabiya, and not army units that defected from Col Gaddafi. “We want a no-fly zone and surgical strikes... We want Nato to take out Col Gaddafi’s bases,” said Dr Suleiman al-Obeidi, 43, at the hospital.
“We are civilians. What can we do against heavy weapons? Against tanks, Grad rockets and warships?” he demanded.
“Give us tanks, give us planes and we will do it ourselves; we will defeat his machine.
“Unless Nato does this he will slaughter us all.”
The lightly armed rebels, who launched the revolt a month ago and began to advance westward towards the capital Tripoli, have been pushed back some 200 kilometres by Col Gaddafi’s better equipped forces in the past week.
General Abdel Fatah Yunis, who resigned as Interior Minister to join the revolt and now leads its military forces, had said on Sunday that his troops would defend Ajdabiya at all costs.