LIBYAN REBELS underlined their superiority on the country’s battlefield by kneeling down for a mass prayer on their frontline facing Sirte, Muammar Gadafy’s birthplace, yesterday afternoon.
Recent battles have brought them to Kubris Saddadah, a highway intersection in the middle of the desert. Ahead of them the empty road stretches away in the heat haze 80 miles to Sirte, Gadafy’s last coastal stronghold.
Somewhere over the horizon are the remnants of Gadafy’s forces, now trapped in Sirte after a force of 300 rebel pick-up trucks rushed 100 miles through the desert to link up with opposition forces at Waddan, cutting the final highway out.
“It was like Mad Max,” said rebel fighter Farouk Ben Ahmeda. “We drove through the desert all together, nobody stopped us.”
However tougher opposition awaits at Sirte. Rebel units reached the Sirte Gate, 30 miles from the city centre, on Sunday, only to be driven back.
The fighting cost Misurata’s rebels five dead and 14 wounded, creating familiar scenes of bodies wrapped in grey blankets and grief-stricken relatives in the city’s Mujamma Aleiadat hospital late on Sunday night.
It is the same story at Beni Walid, a town featuring a half-built castle once intended as a luxury home for Gadafy 100 miles south of Tripoli. Confused reports indicate a rebellion inside the town, but rebel forces surrounding Beni Walid met heavy fire as they advance.
With Nato continuing to hit targets and the capital now under the control of the National Transitional Council, rebels do not doubt their victory, only how long Gadafy’s units will hold out.
“They cannot win,” said rebel fighter Yunis Al Haj, sheltering from the fierce sun in the shadow of the overpass. One reason why Beni Walid and Sirte resisted, he said, was that the diehards in both were guilty of murder and torture, and knew surrender meant probable trials and execution.
Another may be that loyalist units, cut off from communication with all but their own propaganda, simply have no idea that Tripoli has fallen. “Nobody knows about the other side in this war,” said Al Haj (18). “They don’t know about us, we don’t know about them . . . they fight to the end, but they chose the wrong side.”
Meanwhile, rebel tensions are beginning to emerge. At Kilometer Sixty, 20 miles behind the line, a furious argument erupted when one brigade arrived to find the checkpoint commander refusing to let them through, saying they were not assigned to this sector.
Finally, the brigade soldiers got in their vehicles and simply drove around the checkpoint, daring its garrison to stop them.
Back at Kubris Saddadah, brigade commander Omar Elewaieb said Sirte would be attacked again later in the week, but a final round of talks was now taking place.
“We have four brigades here,” he said. He said he expected the talks to fail and that rebel forces were going to have to fight their way into Beni Walid and Sirte, then drive 1,600km (1,000 miles) south and take the final Gadafy stronghold, Sabha.
The only prediction opposition fighters are willing to make is that Mujamma Aleiadat will endure more scenes of death before the curtain falls on this war.
Reuters adds: Gadafy loyalists killed 17 guards outside an oil refinery 20km from the coastal town of Ras Lanuf yesterday in an apparent attempt to disrupt a drive by Libya’s new rulers to seize Gadafy’s last bastions and revive the oil-based economy.
More Gadafy officials and family members are believed to have fled abroad. His son Saadi arrived in neighbouring Niger at the weekend. Two other sons and his only biological daughter have fled to Algeria. One son is reported to have died in the war and three are still at large.