LIBYAN FORCES loyal to the interim council appear to have taken key sites across the besieged city of Sirte, the last major stronghold of pro-Gadafy forces.
Among the buildings captured were the vast Ouagadougou Convention Centre, where loyalist fighters have held up attackers for weeks and the Ibn Sina hospital on the south side of Sirte.
By mid-morning, the sprawling conference centre had been abandoned by its defenders. Inside the five-hectare complex, which has been the centre of the coastal town’s defences, revolutionary fighters posed in halls scattered with debris and drove around in electric golf buggies and other vehicles they found inside.
Shattered plate-glass windows and pockmarked walls revealed the intensity of the past week’s fighting. Some of the buildings had been blasted open by shellfire and spent shell cases were scattered across the ground.
Inside the main conference hall, large signs declared “Shame on agents” and “Sirte is the summit of high hopes.” There was no sign of the defenders who have held out for days, with National Transitional Council troops saying that pro-Gadafy soldiers appear to have fallen back towards the hospital, abandoning their vehicles as they fled.
“We went in without receiving fire from Gadafy forces. There were many of our people inside,” siad Ahram al-Jama. “Now that we have captured the Ouagadougou centre, we want to finish it today.”
From the conference centre, columns of revolutionary fighters were spreading out through Sirte, as the sound of gun battles and rocket-propelled grenades echoed across the city.
On the eastern side of town, at a luxury hotel which has become a staging post for forces from Benghazi, fighters said they had pushed forward to take new areas overnight. However despite early reports of stiff resistance from loyalist positions, revolutionary commanders said many of their casualties had been caused by friendly fire.
Another landmark target for the advance on Sirte, the university, had also been seized overnight, transitional council forces in the east of the city said, although some came under heavy fire yesterday morning and had fallen back.
“Last night, we were sleeping in the university and this morning we came under random strikes there,” said a fighter who had withdrawn from the position. “We have martyrs inside and we are trying to get them out.”
The bodies of two men lay in a nearby field hospital, one with his face blown off. They had been hit by an anti-aircraft gun while trying to evacuate patients from a frontline hospital, their comrades said.
The faltering struggle to capture Sirte and the few remaining bastions of Gadafy loyalists has sidetracked transitional council efforts to set up an effective government in Libya and rebuild the oil production vital to its economy.
Sirte holds a symbolic importance because Gadafy transformed it from a fishing village into a second capital. He built opulent villas, hotels and conference halls to house the international summits he liked to stage there.
However taking Sirte carries risks for Libya’s new rulers. A drawn-out battle with many civilian casualties would breed hostility that would make it difficult for the transitional council to unite the country once the fighting is over.
Thousands of civilians have fled Sirte as fighting has intensified, describing increasingly desperate conditions for those still inside the city. – (Guardian service)