Libyan rebels yesterday embarked on the job of getting the capital up and running again, while keeping up the battle against Muammar Gaddafi’s forces and the hunt for the elusive strongman.
While fighting was still under way on various fronts, with the insurgents working to consolidate their hold on Tripoli, focus was increasingly turning to a post-Gaddafi era, with calls for reconciliation and a peaceful transition.
The spokesman for the rebels’ National Transitional Council, Mahmud Shammam, said they would start distributing 30,000 tons of petrol to Tripoli residents immediately, and would be providing cooking gas within the next 48 hours.
They were also working to restore the Zawiyah refinery, Shammam said, pleading for patience and calling on all public, private and oil sector employees to return to work.
“We are starting from point zero in this situation. Do not ask for miracles, but we promise to try to make this difficult period as short as we can,” Shammam said.
“The problems and accidents we are facing are less than in any other experience in an international war,” he said. “We don’t have chaos. We don’t have fire everywhere. We are in control.”
But he admitted there was still resistance left.
“Anybody who thinks that there is not a fraction of people who support Gaddafi or that there is no fifth column who will try to trouble the peace of Tripoli would be mistaken.
“After 42 years of dictatorship we will find a problem of people trying to harm our society. We are a city liberated for just a few days.”
Electricity in the capital is out for several hours a day. Many districts have no water, while others only have undrinkable groundwater. The price of food and petrol – when it can be found – has skyrocketed.
Mountains of rubbish have piled up on the sweltering city’s streets since the rebels entered the capital a week ago, battling Gaddafi’s forces until they stormed his compound last Tuesday and then mopped up.
The rebels late on Friday captured the Ras Jdir border post on the frontier with Tunisia, which it was feared Gaddafi, his henchmen and family might use to escape.
“Now we have cut the road, they have nowhere to go but the desert,” said the commander of the rebel force at Ras Jdir, Jamal Mansuri.
Shammam said the coastal highway from Tripoli to the border would be open once fighting ends in Zuwarah, 90 kilometres west of the capital, which is held by rebels but still being bombarded by pro-Gaddafi forces.
As one potential escape route for Gaddafi was closed off, Egyptian state news agency MENA quoted a rebel source as saying a motorcade of six armoured Mercedes that could be carrying Libyan officials, even Gaddafi, had crossed into Algeria.
The source said the convoy had been escorted by pro-government troops until it entered the town of Ghadames in Algeria, and that rebels had not been able to pursue them.
An Algerian official said the border crossing had been open but he had no reports of any motorcade passing through.
The rebels, who are making slow progress in their advance on Gaddafi’s hometown of Sirte, east of Tripoli, another possibly bolthole, want to find him so they can proclaim final victory in the six-month-old uprising.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said yesterday that Gaddafi, who has a $1.7 million rebel price on his head, should be tried by the International Criminal Court.
“Gaddafi should have a trial according to the law, something he never did with his opponents,” she told the weekly Bild am Sonntag.
Merkel, whose country would not take part in the air campaign that led to Gaddafi’s ouster, did not rule out sending German troops to Libya as part of a UN stabilisation mission.
But she added: “The new Libyan government must decide on what support it needs and I think that this is first and foremost an issue for the UN, the Arab League and the African Union.”
The capital was calm yesterday and a semblance of normal life returning after a night of isolated explosions and small-arms fire in different parts of the city, an AFP correspondent said.
After several days of intense combat, the remaining Gaddafi forces seemed to have opted for guerrilla tactics, striking in small groups to keep tensions high and then withdrawing.
The airport, held by the rebels, was still being targeted by sporadic shooting and shelling but the insurgents said they had expanded the area under their control.
The local rebel commander, Bashir al-Taibi, told AFP: “We control the entire airport,” adding that his men were trying to flush out snipers in an area about two kilometres away.
Last Friday, he said, Gaddafi forces fired rockets and mortars at the airport, destroying three parked civilian aircraft and damaging others.
The UN, African Union, Arab League and EU urged both sides in Libya to avoid reprisals, EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said after talks of the so-called Cairo Group.
“Colonel Gaddafi must avoid further bloodshed by relinquishing power and calling on those forces that continue to fight to lay down their arms and protect civilians,” she said.