TRIPOLI - Residents of the Libyan capital yesterday were scrambling to find supplies, exploiting lulls in the battles still being fought in parts of the city to venture out of their homes and queue for bread.
Two days after rebels stormed the compound that was the seat of Muammar Gadafy’s rule and forced him into hiding, most of Tripoli was free of violence but chaotic. But even in districts that had seemed calm, fierce gunfights broke out suddenly, underlining the fact the rebels’ grip on security in this city is still fragile.
The Corinthia hotel, a short walk from the central Green Square renamed Martyr’s Square by the rebels – and in an area that had seemed firmly under rebel control, was at the centre of a brief battle. Rebel fighters positioned in the grounds of the hotel used anti-aircraft guns and rocket-propelled grenades to fire at snipers in buildings nearby. Other rebel gunmen positioned themselves on the roof.
Foreign journalists staying in the hotel – some of whom had transferred there after escaping another hotel where Gadafy loyalists had been holding them – moved away from the windows to avoid being hit. The fighting died down after about an hour.
There were other gunbattles being fought: around the Bab al-Aziziya compound which was the seat of Gadafy’s rule until he vacated it, and in the Abu Salim neighbourhood, in the south of the city. Away from these trouble spots, people who had spent days in their homes eking out supplies were tentatively emerging.
There was more traffic on the streets, where until now the only vehicles were the rebels’ pickup trucks with sand smeared on them for camouflage.
Bakeries were among the only businesses open, and outside these long queues had formed. A group of men in one neighbourhood began to load rubbish piling up in the streets into a truck.
“The security has improved in many parts of the city compared to yesterday,” said Said al-Shaab, an engineer volunteering to clear the trash. “People are starting to come out of their houses.” Nearby, residents set up a makeshift medical clinic, citing the fear of snipers on the route to the hospital.
The rebels’ National Transitional Council, backed by western powers, has said it will implement a plan to restore order and stop Tripoli descending into the kind of anarchy experienced by the Iraqi capital after the fall of Saddam Hussein. But the only evidence of any kind of organised rebel authority in the streets were the many checkpoints. Manned by rebel fighters, they checked cars to make sure they were not carrying weapons.
Among the fighters not involved in battles, there was time to savour their victory. At the Bab al-Aziziya compound, fighters were still shooting their weapons in the air in celebration, 48 hours after their forces swept in.
They climbed on to a statue of a gold fist holding a US jet, erected by Gadafy to mark a confrontation with the US in the 1980s.
A few kilometres away, in a clearing by the seafront, stood at least 100 rebel vehicles. They were part of a force which had arrived in the city from Misurata, a rebel stronghold in the east, to help clear the city. But with the fighting confined to small pockets, they had little to do. Some lay on blankets and others cleaned their weapons. “Gadafy is finished,” said one.
Rumours of Gadafy or his sons being cornered, even sighted, swirled among excitable rebel fighters engaged in heavy machine gun and rocket exchanges. But two days after his compound was overrun, hopes of a swift end to six months of war were still being frustrated by fierce rearguard actions.
Western powers demanded Gadafy’s surrender and worked to release frozen Libyan state funds, hoping to ease hardships and start reconstruction in the oil-rich state. But with loyalists holding out in the capital, in Gadafy’s coastal home city and deep in the inland desert, violence could go on for some time, testing the ability of the government in waiting to keep order.
“The tribes . . . must march on Tripoli,” Gadafy said in an audio message broadcast on a sympathetic TV channel. “Do not leave Tripoli to those rats, kill them, defeat them quickly.
“The enemy is delusional, Nato is retreating,” he shouted, sounding firmer and clearer than in a similar speech released on Wednesday. Though his enemies believe Gadafy (69) is still in the capital, they fear he could flee by long-prepared escape routes, using tunnels and bunkers, to rally an insurgency.
Diehards numbering perhaps in the hundreds were keeping at bay squads of irregular, anti-Gadafy fighters who had swept into the capital on Sunday and who were now rushing from one site to another, firing assault rifles, machine guns and anti-aircraft cannon bolted to the backs of pick-up trucks.