BREGA, Libya — Rebels fought off a coordinated assault by military jets and armored ground forces near a key oil port Wednesday, thwarting Libyan leader Moammar Khadafy’s most significant attempt yet to retake eastern territory that he lost last week amid a nationwide uprising.
Despite aged equipment and little training, a ragtag team of thousands that rushed to the port city of Brega repelled government forces and retook the town after setbacks earlier in the day. Emboldened by their victory, the rebels planned to advance west and on to Khadafy’s stronghold of Tripoli, the capital, some said.
“He has the force, but we have the heart,” said Suleiman Abdel, a surgeon and, now, a rebel.
The government’s assault on Brega, which included multiple airstrikes, showed that Khadafy still has substantial military resources at his disposal and that he is willing to use them. Even as the battle unfolded, Khadafy pledged in a defiant televised address to “fight to the last drop of Libyan blood.”
The day’s clashes suggested that in the absence of outside intervention, Libya could be headed toward a long and bloody stalemate. Khadafy holds Tripoli and other western cities, the rebels control the east, and neither side appears able to decisively shift the balance.
“He showed he still has the power to inflict serious damage on the protesters and the places they control,” said Ibrahim Sharqieh of the Brookings Doha Center. “If he is willing to use the air force, this could drag on for months.”
Rebel leaders in the eastern city of Benghazi called Wednesday for international airstrikes against government targets, as well as a no-fly zone to keep Khadafy’s planes out of the sky. But U.S. officials have said that such steps are unlikely.
The U.S. has spoken out against Khadafy but has few contacts among the opposition.
Britain said Wednesday that Gen. Abdul Fattah Younis al-Obeidi, a former Libyan interior minister it described as “the senior military figure” among the rebels, had spoken by telephone with British Foreign Secretary William Hague.
According to a British government statement, Hague told Obeidi that Britain is “deeply concerned about the violence and is in the process of contingency planning for all eventualities, including a no-fly zone, in close conjunction with its allies.”
NATO and members of the U.N. Security Council have said that military intervention, including a no-fly zone, would require U.N. authorization. Russia and China, with veto power on the panel, have indicated they would oppose such authorization.
In Washington, administration officials and lawmakers voiced widely divergent opinions about direct intervention.
“If it’s ordered, we can do it,” Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Wednesday of a no-fly zone. But he cautioned against “loose talk about military options.”
“A no-fly zone begins with an attack on Libya to destroy air defenses,” he said. “It also requires more airplanes than you would find on a single aircraft carrier. So, it is a big operation in a big country.”
Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman John Kerry, D-Mass., appeared to take issue with Gates’ comments. “This is not a big air force,” he said of Libya in an interview on MSNBC. “It’s not an enormously complicated defense system.”
Khadafy appeared on state television Wednesday to deny the existence of a rebellion in Libya. During a nearly three-hour address in a chamber filled with chanting supporters, the leader dismissed the unrest as an isolated attack by Islamic terrorists.
Khadafy, who seized power in 1969, warned the West that instability in his country could lead to an increase in Islamic terrorism and a flood of migrant African workers into Europe. He also cautioned that any foreign intervention would lead to “a bloody war.”
“He dives deeper and deeper into a state of denial and delusion,” said Sharqieh, an expert on conflict resolution in the region. “This is really dangerous. He seems comfortable with this situation now.”
