Sunday, March 06, 2011

Libyan Military Launch Attacks Against U.S.-backed Rebel Groups

March 6, 2011

Rebel Advance in Libya Set Back By Heavy Assault

By KAREEM FAHIM
New York Times

BENGHAZI, Libya — In a heavy assault Sunday, the Libyan military drove rebel forces out of the coastal city of Bin Jawwad and back along the main coastal road, keeping up a heavy barrage of tank and artillery fire and airstrikes, according to witnesses near the town.

The number of casualties in the battle was unclear, but it set back the rebels’ western advance just a day after they celebrated a major victory in taking the vital oil port of Ras Lanuf. On Sunday, rebel leaders said they were regrouping outside that city and would begin pushing west toward Bin Jawwad again.

But a journalist with the main rebel force, numbering in the hundreds and possibly more than 1,000 fighters, said that the Libyan Army had heavily reinforced a small town just to the east of Bin Jawwad. By nightfall, the rebel force remained unable to advance further, fanning out to the north and south of the main, two-lane road in order to keep the army from flanking them.

Just outside the capital, a standoff continued in the rebel-held city of Zawiyah, a day after forces loyal to Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi waged a heavy assault toward the city center and then pulled back to close off all roads out.

Rebels in nearby towns said that mobile phone service to Zawiyah had been cut off completely and landline service was intermittent, making it difficult to gather new information about the state of the siege. Second-hand reports through rebel networks on Sunday indicated Libyan army tanks had once again moved into the center of the town.

An hour before dawn on Sunday, Tripoli also erupted in gunfire, the sounds of machine guns and heavier artillery echoing through the capital. The spark was unclear — there were rumors of a conflict within the armed Qaddafi forces — but soon Qaddafi supporters were riding through the streets waving green flags and firing guns into the air. Crowds converged on the city’s central Green Square for a rally, with many people still shooting skyward. The shots rang out for more than three hours, with occasional ambulance sirens squealing in the background.

Government spokesmen called it a celebration of victories over the rebels, but the rebels denied any losses, pointing out that 6 a.m. Sunday is an unusual time for a victory rally and that rally was notably well-armed. Protesters in the capital suggested it was a show of force intended to deter unrest or possibly cover up some earlier conflict. A rebel spokesman, reached over the phone, said his leadership was relying on international media reports to try to make sense of the early morning gunfire in Tripoli.

“It is very hard to reach Trip,” he said, alluding to the pervasive surveillance and recent spate of arrests. “When we talk to someone in Tripoli, you put their life in jeopardy.”

By early afternoon Sunday, Libyan state television and government officials in Tripoli were making increasingly strong and apparently false statements about progress against the rebels. Officials said that pro-Qaddafi forces had captured the city of Misrata as well as the leaders of the rebels governing council and would soon retake the country, though rebel leaders denied all of those claims. One witness there said rebel forces had surrounded a contingent of Libyan army trucks and personnel carriers after it entered the town in a battle that killed as many as nine Libyan soldiers and four rebels.

State television reported that Qaddafi forces were marching on the rebel headquarters of Benghazi. But multiple reports from the ground on the front lines and in rebel territory indicated that all those reports were false and in fact rebels were, at the very least, regrouping to try to push westward toward Surt, the town where Colonel Qaddafi was born and that blocks the rebels’ progress toward Tripoli.

Eight British soldiers were briefly taken captive by Libyan rebel forces in the east of the country, according to British media reports Sunday.

The soldiers, from Britain’s elite Special Air Service, had been part of a team escorting a British diplomat to meet with Libyan rebels trying to oust Col. Qaddafi, said The Sunday Times of London, which first reported on the incident. The newspaper cited anonymous Libyan and British sources and said the men had been held at a military base over the weekend.

British Foreign Secretary William Hague confirmed in a statement that “a small British diplomatic team” in Benghazi had attempted to “initiate contacts with the opposition” but “experienced difficulties, which have now been satisfactorily resolved. They have now left Libya.” The government declined to immediately provide further details.

Nineteen days after it began with spirited demonstrations in the eastern city of Benghazi, the Libyan uprising has veered sharply from the pattern of relatively quick and nonviolent upheavals that ousted the leaders of Tunisia and Egypt. Instead, the rebellion here has become mired in a drawn-out ground campaign between two relatively unprofessional and loosely organized forces — the Libyan Army and the rebels — that is exacting high civilian casualties and appears likely to drag on for some time.

That bloody standoff was evident on Saturday in Zawiyah, the northwestern city seized by rebels a week ago, where the government’s attacks raised puzzling questions about its strategy. For the second day in a row its forces punched into the city, then pulled back to maintain a siege from the perimeter. Hours later, they advanced and retreated again.

By the end of the day, both sides claimed control of the city.

Foreign journalists were unable to cross military checkpoints to evaluate reports of what Zawiyah residents called “a massacre.”

Witnesses there began frantic calls to journalists in Tripoli at 6 a.m. Saturday to report that soldiers of the Khamis brigade, which is named for the Qaddafi son who commands it and is considered the family’s most formidable force, had broken through the east and west gates of the city. “They are killing us,” one resident said. “They are firing on us.”

The militia attacked with tanks, heavy artillery and machine guns, witnesses said, and the explosions were clearly audible in the background.

The rebels, including former members of the Libyan military, returned fire. Although a death toll was impossible to determine, one resident said four of his neighbors were killed, including one who was found stripped of his clothes.

A correspondent for Sky News, a British satellite TV channel and the only foreign news organization in the city, reported seeing the militia fire on ambulances trying to remove the wounded from the streets. The reporter also said she had seen at least eight dead soldiers and five armored vehicles burning in the central square.

At 10 a.m., witnesses said, the Qaddafi forces abruptly withdrew, taking up positions in a close circle around the city.

Some rebels painted the pullout as a victory, but others acknowledged that there was little evidence that they had inflicted enough damage on the militia to force the retreat. Around 4 p.m., the militia attacked again. A witness said as many as six tanks rolled through town, there were more skirmishes with the rebels, and then the tanks left as quickly as they had arrived.

At a news conference Saturday night in Tripoli, Deputy Foreign Minister Khalid Kaim described Zawiyah as “peaceful for the moment.” Another foreign ministry official, Yousef Shakir, called it “99 percent” under government control.

Officials also showed videos that they said proved their opponents were not peaceful demonstrators. Aerial video of Zawiyah showed tanks on the streets and antiaircraft guns on the roofs of mosques.

Another video was said to show rebel interrogations and executions, which the officials likened to the tactics of Al Qaeda.

Despite all the footage of rebel weapons, the officials denied they were fighting a civil war. “There are some people who are acting in contravention of the law, which can happen anywhere,” a spokesman said. Mr. Shakir said: “It is a conspiracy, a very highly organized conspiracy. We will show the foreign hands in the near future.”

In Benghazi, the rebels’ de facto capital, the rebels took further steps toward political organization. Their shadow government, the Libyan National Council, held its inaugural meeting Saturday and appointed a three-member crisis committee.

Reporting was contributed by David D. Kirkpatrick from Tripoli, Tyler Hicks and Lynsey Addario from Bin Jawwad, Libya, Ed Ou from Benghazi, Libya, and Ravi Somaiya from London.

No comments:

Post a Comment