Libyan rebels accused Muammar Gaddafi of playing dirty games in Misrata where salvos of Grad rockets exploded today in apparent contradiction of his regime's vow to halt fire in the western city.
In a Misrata hospital, meanwhile, two captured pro-Gaddafi soldiers told AFP that loyalist forces were losing their grip in the battle for the western port, and that their morale was sinking.
"Many soldiers want to surrender but they are afraid of being executed" by the rebels, said Lili Mohammed, a Mauritanian mercenary hired by the Kadhafi regime to fight insurgents in the country's third city.
"Gaddafi forces are losing" in Misrata, said Misbah Mansuri, 25, another wounded loyalist fighter who said he was forcibly enlisted 45 days ago.
Both Mohammed and Mansuri spoke to AFP separately from their hospital room in the presence of a doctor, saying officers had abandoned the troops and their supply lines were cut.
Deputy Foreign Minister Khaled Kaim said early today the army had suspended operations against rebels in Misrata, but not left the city, to enable local tribes to find a peaceful solution.
"The armed forces have not withdrawn from Misrata. They have simply suspended their operations," he told a news conference in Tripoli.
"The tribes are determined to solve the problem within 48 hours... We believe that this battle will be settled peacefully and not militarily."
But Colonel Omar Bani, the military spokesman of the rebels' Transitional National Council, said Gaddafi was "playing a really dirty game" aimed at dividing his opponents.
"It is a trick, they didn't go," Bani said in the eastern rebel stronghold of Benghazi. "They have stayed a bit out of Tripoli Street but they are preparing themselves to attack again."
Kaim had previously announced the army would withdraw from Misrata and leave local tribes to resolve the conflict there, either by talks or through force.
But later on Sunday bursts of automatic weapons fire could be heard and Grad rockets exploded in the city, the scene of deadly urban guerrilla fighting for weeks between rebels and Kadhafi loyalists.
Six people were killed and 34 wounded in Sunday's fighting, said Doctor Khalid Abu Falra at Misrata's main private clinic.
Misrata suffered its heaviest toll in 65 days of fighting yesterday, with 28 dead and 100 wounded compared with a daily average of 11 killed, according to Falra.
"We're overwhelmed, overwhelmed. We lack everything: personnel, equipment and medicines," Falra said.
NATO warplanes staged raids on civil and military sites in Tripoli and other cities, JANA news agency said, without giving casualty numbers. Earlier raids by the alliance struck near a compound in the capital where Kadhafi resides.
Three explosions rocked Tripoli late Saturday as NATO warplanes overflew the capital, AFP journalists said, after several earlier blasts in the city centre and outlying districts.
Heavy anti-aircraft and automatic arms fire was also heard across Tripoli.
On Sunday, US Senator John McCain, who visited the rebel stronghold of Benghazi last week, urged Washington to increase its air strikes on Libya, warning a prolonged stalemate would likely draw Al-Qaeda into the conflict.
"The longer we delay, the more likely it is there's is a stalemate. And if you're worried about Al-Qaeda entering into this fight, nothing would bring Al-Qaeda in more rapidly and more dangerously than a stalemate," McCain told NBC's "Meet the Press."
"It's pretty obvious to me that the US has got to play a greater role on the air power side. Our NATO allies neither have the assets, nor frankly the will," he said, while opposing the deployment of American troops on the ground.
Kadhafi's regime accused the United States, which has launched its first Predator drone strike on a rocket launcher targeting Misrata, of "new crimes against humanity" for deploying the low-flying, unmanned aircraft.
In his traditional Easter message today, Pope Benedict XVI called for "diplomacy and dialogue" in Libya.
"In the current conflict in Libya, may diplomacy and dialogue take the place of arms and may those who suffer as a result of the conflict be given access to humanitarian aid," the Pope said.
A French journalist shot in the neck in Misrata was in intensive care today after undergoing surgery, medics said. Friends refused to identify the journalist, a blogger who worked for "alternative media."
And Manu Brabo, a Spanish photographer who has been held in Libya for almost three weeks, has phoned his parents for the first time to say he is being well treated in a military prison in Tripoli, Spanish radio said.
At the prized western gate into Ajdabiya, a lull in the fighting has given families some respite in their search for loved ones who have gone missing in and around the strategic crossroads city.
"As things calm down, people are building up the courage to come out and report," said Najim Miftah, a volunteer who has a binder of missing people that has doubled in two days with more than 70 new records.
NATO said it had kept a "high operational tempo" of more than 3,000 sorties, nearly half of them strikes, since the transatlantic military alliance assumed full control of the mission at the end of last month.
An aid ship delivered 160 tonnes of food and medicine to the port city of Misrata on Saturday and evacuated around 1,000 stranded migrant workers and wounded civilians to Benghazi on its return.
Hundreds of people had lined up along the harbour front in hope of getting on board the vessel chartered by the International Organisation for Migration.
The fourth such rotation brought to 4,100 the number of people of 21 different nationalities evacuated by the IOM from Misrata since the launch of a humanitarian programme on 14 April, the organisation said.
"Although the number of migrants in and around the harbour in Misrata is now believed to be around 1,500, there are reports of more people moving from suburbs in the west of the city towards the port area," it said.
The UN refugee agency says about 15,000 people have fled fighting in western Libya into Tunisia in the past two weeks and a much larger exodus was feared. It also says that more than 570,000 people have fled Libya since February 15.
Massive Libyan protests in February -- inspired by the revolts that toppled long-time autocrats in Egypt and Tunisia -- escalated into war when Kadhafi's troops fired on demonstrators and protesters seized several eastern towns.
The battle lines have been more or less static in recent weeks, however, as NATO air strikes have helped block Gaddafi's eastward advance but failed to give the poorly organised and outgunned rebels a decisive victory.