Rebels said they arrested dozens of militiamen loyal to Muammar Gaddafi in their eastern bastion but suffered a blow yesterday in Libya’s west, losing a village at the foot of a key mountain range.
At least 63 people were rounded up in an ongoing bid to tighten security in the eastern city of Benghazi, following an hours-long battle with Gaddafi loyalists in the opposition stronghold.
But in western Libya, pro-Gaddafi forces wrested back control of the village of Josh at the foot of the strategic Nafusa mountains, AFP journalists at the scene said.
Josh had been emptied of its residents, the rebels said.
The rebels captured the village on Sunday but said they were forced to retreat to the east, half-way along the road to the town of Shakshuka, after several hours of fighting. The Nafusa region has seen heavy fighting between rebels and forces loyal to Colonel Gaddafi since the insurgents launched a major offensive this month in a drive on the capital Tripoli.
An AFP correspondent in Tripoli, meanwhile, said at least eight powerful explosions rocked the eastern suburbs of the Libyan capital yesterday, sending up a plume of black smoke over the Tajura district.
In Benghazi, opposition forces patrolled the streets overnight in a bid to track down more members of the pro-Gaddafi group, a rebel spokesman said.
“We caught about 38 and later today more than 25,” the spokesman, Mustafa al-Sagazly, said late on Sunday.
“Some of them ran away and we are trying to catch them all over the city,” he said. “We are arresting them.”
The arrests came hot on the heels of a five-hour raid by the rebel-backed February 17 brigade on a Benghazi factory, leaving four rebels and five Gaddafi loyalists dead. The fierce shootout erupted at around dawn on Sunday during a raid on the cell holed up inside a licence plate-making factory. Rebel spokesman Mahmud Shammam said the group had been rounded up for its role in organising a prison break in Benghazi last week when about 300 prisoners escaped, including high ranking prisoners of war.
The rebels’ National Transition Council vice chairman Abdel Hafiz Ghoga said “only a minority” of the prisoners remained at large and that they “posed no serious threat.” But the pro-Gaddafi cell was found in possession of explosives and had “plans to plant car bombs in Benghazi,” according to Sagazly, deputy chief of the February 17 brigade.
He added the “very same group” – the Katiba Yussef Shakir – was suspected in the assassination of General Abdel Fatah Yunis, a right-hand man to Col Gaddafi before his defection to rebel ranks.
NTC member Ali Tarhuni has said that those who killed General Yunis after he was summoned back to Benghazi from the front by the council for questioning over military issues were members of another shadowy group with suspected Islamist tendencies, Obaidah ibn al-Jarah.
Rebels have also promised a “surprise” in the strategic oil hub Brega where they say they exchanged fire yesterday with troops loyal to Col Gaddafi.
Mohammed Zawawy, a spokesman for the Union of Revolutionary Forces in Ajdabiya, said that rebels engaged a small band of pro-Gaddafi fighters in the outskirts of Brega yesterday, the first day of Ramadan.
Nato said its warplanes carried out 49 strike sorties on Sunday, with hits concentrated in and around Zliten and Bir al-Ghanam. Strikes were also conducted in Tripoli, Brega and Waddan.
Meanwhile France yesterday said it had given Libyan rebels €181 million in frozen funds that used to belong to Col Gaddafi’s regime, while Germany said it expelled a senior diplomat loyal to Col Gaddafi.
And yesterday Norway withdrew as planned its final four F-16 fighter jets that have been taking part in the Nato-led mission over Libya, the Norwegian military said.