An onslaught by Muammar Gaddafi’s army sparked UN calls for urgent access to the “injured and dying” yesterday as a secret British mission to contact opposition forces ended in a diplomatic fiasco.
Rebel forces traded rocket and machine-gun fire with the army as they tried to advance westwards on the Gaddafi stronghold of Sirte, but were beaten back along a dusty desert highway after suffering heavy losses.
The rebels said they had been forced to pull back from the coastal hamlet of Bin Jawad, occupied on Saturday in an advance westward on Col Gaddafi’s home town, after clashes that doctors said left two dead and around 50 wounded.
But untold numbers of “injured and dying” in the western city of Misrata prompted a UN demand for urgent access to the civilian population repeatedly shelled by Gaddafi tanks yesterday.
“Humanitarian organisations need urgent access now,” said UN emergency relief coordinator Valerie Amos.
“People are injured and dying and need help immediately. I call on the authorities to provide access without delay to allow aid workers to help save lives,” added the UN official in a statement.
Residents of Misrata, strategically located between the capital Tripoli and Sirte, said earlier that government tanks were shelling the town and warned of “carnage” if the international community did not intervene. A rebel spokesman confirmed that Misrata was under intense fire from pro-Gaddafi forces and reported casualties, but insisted the city was still in rebel hands, denying a state television report to the contrary.
The Allibiya channel’s report that Col Gaddafi’s forces had retaken a string of strategic oil towns from the rebels was vehemently denied by the opposition.
Thousands celebrated in Tripoli with gunfire, horn-honking and flag waving after Allibiya reported that government forces had taken control of Misrata, Libya’s third city, the key oil hub of Ras Lanuf and even Tobruk near the Egyptian border.
AFP reporters in Ras Lanuf, taken by rebels early on Saturday, confirmed it was still in opposition hands despite being hit by air strikes early yesterday.
A rebel officer, Colonel Bashir al-Moghrabi, told reporters in Ras Lanuf rebels were also still in control in Zawiyah, west of Tripoli, where fierce battles took place on Saturday.
A local doctor said on Saturday there had been a “massacre” in Zawiyah and a Sky News journalist said Col Gaddafi’s forces had fired on civilians.
Libya’s Deputy Foreign Minister Khaled Kaaim told reporters in Tripoli late yesterday that the armed forces would not take the fight to the rebels.
“We are not going to engage in combat with the rebels. The order for the armed forces is to take defensive positions, and not to engage the enemy except if they go on the offensive.”
Meanwhile, wounded streaming back from Bin Jawad to Ras Lanuf said Gaddafi loyalists lured them into a trap, hiding in homes, mingling with civilians and hunkering down on rooftops before opening fire on convoys of volunteers.
A French journalist was shot in the leg, becoming the conflict’s first media casualty, but he was not believed to be seriously hurt.
Later in an apparent counter-claim, state television cited the military as saying the rebels were holding “human shields” in residential sectors of some cities.
Two attacks by lone warplanes targeted a checkpoint on the eastern edge of Ras Lanuf and a rebel camp in a former military barracks in the centre yesterday.
Rebels responded with anti-aircraft fire and there were no immediate reports of casualties, but a huge explosion was heard later in the town.
Col Gaddafi told the French weekly Le Journal du Dimanche he wanted the United Nations or African Union to probe the unrest, and promised: “We will let this panel work unhampered.”