Fighters sent by Libya's new rulers entered one of the last towns loyal to ousted leader Muammar Gadafy today and fought street-to-street battles in what could mark the start of a final showdown against bastions of the former leaders' control.
Bani Walid is one of Col Gadafy's last bastions along with his hometown Sirte on the coast and the remote southern desert town of Sabha.
Elsewhere, Libyan fighters clashed with Gadafy loyalists armed with rockets outside Sirte.
Libya's interim rulers had set a Saturday deadline for Gadafy holdout towns to surrender, but fighters near Bani Walid went in early to protect civilians, National Transitional Council (NTC) official Abdallah Kanshil said.
"They [anti-Gadafy fighters] are in the north of the city fighting snipers. We have also entered from the east," Mr Kanshil said near Bani Walid, 150km southeast of Tripoli.
He estimated loyalist forces at around 600 men, saying pro-Gadafy reinforcements must have recently arrived. "People are very afraid, that is why we have to go in," he said. Troops were still hoping to avert "full-scale war" and had not received orders from central NTC command to enter the town, he said.
Earlier Gadafy loyalists fired volleys of Grad rockets at fighters both north of Bani Walid and east of Sirte, Reuters witnesses said. The NTC said it had also sent convoys of fighters south into the desert towards Sabha.
The Transitional Council had given pro-Gadafy towns until Saturday to surrender peacefully or face attack in what could be some of the last battles in the six-month civil war. Previous deadlines had been extended to allow time for talks to avoid more bloodshed in a conflict believed to have killed thousands.
Ambulances streamed back and forth with casualties from near Bani Walid, and NTC fighters grabbed crates of rocket-propelled grenades and mortars and raced to the front.
In Teassain, 90 km east of Sirte, Reuters witnesses saw heavy rocket exchanges between opposition forces and Gadafy fighters.
Meanwhile Interpol has issued arrest warrants for Col Gadafy, his son Saif al-Islam, and intelligence chief Abdullah al-Senussi, it said in a statement today. The International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor had made the request to the Lyon-based police organisation yesterday.
The ICC issued arrest warrants in June for all three for crimes against humanity.
ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo said he wants Interpol to issue a red notice to arrest Col Gadafy for the alleged crimes against humanity of murder and persecution.
Col Gadafy's own location has been a mystery since Tripoli fell to his enemies on August 23rd after a six-month civil war, although he insisted in a defiant message broadcast yesterday that he was still in Libya to lead the fight against what he called the "rats" and "stray dogs" who had taken over the capital.
Meanwhile some senior Gadafy loyalists are among a new group that has fled to Niger, security sources there said.
Interim prime minister Mahmoud Jibril, in Tripoli for the first time since Col Gadafy was driven from the capital on August 23rd, reminded Libyans that "the tyrant" was not yet finished.
The security sources in Niger said a party of 14 Libyans, including General Ali Kana, a Tuareg who commanded Col Gadafy's southern troops, a second general and two other top officials had arrived in Agadez in northern Niger in a convoy of four-wheel drive vehicles on yesterday afternoon.
A Reuters reporter in Agadez said the four senior officials were staying at a Gadafy-owned hotel in the town.
Niger's government, under pressure from Western powers and Libya's new rulers to hand over former Gadafy officials suspected of human rights abuses, has not yet commented.
It said it accepted a convoy carrying Mansour Dhao, head of Col Gadafy's security brigades, on Monday on humanitarian grounds.
Some NTC officials have said Col Gadafy must be captured or killed before Libya can be declared liberated and a timetable for elections and a new constitution can start running.
Col Gadafy said in what Syrian-based Arrai TV said was a live broadcast from Libya: "We will not leave our ancestral land. . . . The youths are now ready to escalate the resistance against the rats in Tripoli and to finish off the mercenaries."
Reuters