Forces loyal to Libyan strongman Muammar Gaddafi launched attacks yesterday on a key town rebels who are seeking to topple him have vowed to defend, as leading nations began talks on the crisis.
Rebel fighters in Ajdabiya said four shells had fallen west of the town while a former officer who defected from Col Gaddafi’s air force said there had been air strikes.
Ex-colonel Jamal Mansur also said that rebels had regained a foothold in Brega, 80 kilometres to the west, which the Libyan army said it had captured Sunday.
Ajdabiya guards vital roads north along the coast to the rebel capital of Benghazi and east across the desert to the oil port of Tobruk, which has given the insurgents control of eastern Libya up to the Egyptian border.
The lightly-armed rebels have been pushed back some 200 kilometres by the superior Gaddafi forces in recent days and are now only 170 kilometres from Benghazi, Libya’s second city with a population of around a million.
Mr Mansur said Ajdabiya could become “another Zawiyah,” referring to the town 40 kilometres west of Tripoli which was reconquered by pro-Gaddafi troops last week after bitter and deadly fighting.
The rebels braced for new attacks knowing they could expect little quarter from Gaddafi’s troops equipped with heavy weaponry and warplanes to which they have virtually no answer.
Mr Mansur admitted the rebels were seriously ill-equipped and warned that they could turn to urban guerrilla warfare.
“We are asking the West to carry out targeted strikes on military installations” as proposed by France, he said as US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrived in Paris for talks with G8 counterparts.
The Group of Eight powers – Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the US and Russia – were to discuss proposals for a no-fly zone to ground the warplanes pounding Libya’s rebel forces.
Russia has appeared reluctant and the US, Germany and Italy have taken a cautious line on intervention, but the move was backed on Saturday by the 22-nation Arab League.
Meanwhile Libya’s state news agency said Col Gaddafi had invited Chinese, Russian and Indian firms to produce its oil instead of Western companies that fled the unrest.