Libyan interim government forces have pledged to mount a final decisive attack on Muammar Gadafy's hometown and one of his former lieutenants says he believes the deposed leader is ready to fight to the end.
"I think Gadafy ... has not left the country. I strongly believe, based on my knowledge of him, that he is fighting with his weapons and alongside his men," Col Gadafy's former prime minister Al-Baghdadi Ali al-Mahmoudi, who is in prison in Tunisia, said in comments issued by his lawyer.
"He will not give up and he will not lay down his weapons until the end," Mr Mahmoudi said yesterday.
Col Gadafy and several of his sons are still at large more than seven weeks after rebel fighters stormed the capital and ended his 42-year rule. His supporters hold Sirte and the town of Bani Walid, south of Tripoli.
Government forces who had for three weeks been pinned down by artillery and rocket fire on the eastern edges of Sirte have since advanced several kilometres into the city, capturing the southern district of Bouhadi.
Bullet-holed cars carrying terrified, ill and hungry civilians crawled out of Sirte. Aid agencies say they are concerned about civilians who are trapped inside the city by the fighting and running out of food, water, fuel and medicine.
Commanders of forces loyal to the ruling National Transitional Council (NTC) are talking of a "final" push to take the town. Backed by Nato warplanes, they have been bombarding pro-Gadafy positions inside Sirte.
US defence secretary Leon Panetta said he expected Nato aerial operations over Libya to continue while fighting goes on, but that the alliance would discuss the issue this week.
"As long as there's fighting that's continuing in Libya, I suspect that the Nato mission would continue," Mr Panetta told reporters in Cairo.
Nato renewed the mission in September for 90 days but agreed to review conditions every 30 days to see whether operations could be ended.
A senior US defence official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the "general consensus is that we're not there yet because of the continued fighting and resistance of pro-Gadafy forces."
Mr Panetta said the fighting in Sirte and the mystery over Col Gadafy's whereabouts left a question mark over how to end Nato's air operation and allow the interim administration to move on to other issues.
Col Gadafy's former prime minister, who is in prison while the authorities in neighbouring Tunisia consider a request from the NTC for his extradition, said he would be ready to cooperate with Libya's new rulers if they dropped that request.
"I hope to be a part of the solution in Libya and not part of the problem," he said.
Concerns about the humanitarian crisis in Sirte have focussed on the Ibn Sina hospital. Medical workers who fled Sirte said patients were dying on the operating table because there was no oxygen and no fuel for the hospital's generators.
On the east of the city yesterday, NTC fighters said they were trying to clear a corridor to the hospital but that they were being hampered by pro-Gadafy snipers.
Col Gadafy's former prime minister, who is not on the list of former Libyan officials wanted by the International Criminal Court, distanced himself from the repression of the old regime.
"I tell you one thing: I was hated by Gadafy's entourage," Mr al-Mahmoudi said. "I am convinced that I have done nothing bad to the Libyans," he said. "My role was to ensure food supplies for the Libyan people, particularly during the crisis."
"The French know very well that this was the role I played ... I had no military role."
Col Gadafy's spokesman, and some civilians leaving Sirte, have blamed Nato bombing and NTC shelling for killing civilians and destroying buildings in the town.
Nato and the NTC say Gadafy loyalists have been executing suspected NTC sympathisers and forcing others to fight.
Medical staff outside Sirte said they had been told the corridors of Ibn Sina were full of patients and that only pro-Gadafy fighters or members of his tribe were being treated.
A military spokesman for the interim government has said that Col Gadafy's son Mutassim is hiding in the hospital.
Reuters