TRIPOLI, Libya — Government forces in tanks rolled into the opposition-held city closest to Tripoli after blasting it with artillery and mortar fire, while rebels captured a key oil port and pushed toward Moammar Khadafy’s hometown in a seesaw Saturday for both sides in the bloody battle for control of Libya.
With the Khadafy regime’s tanks prowling the center of the city of Zawiya, west of Tripoli, residents ferried the wounded from the fierce fighting in private cars to a makeshift clinic in a mosque, fearing that any of the injured taken to the military-controlled hospital “will be killed for sure,” one rebel said after nightfall.
The rival successes — by Khadafy’s forces in entering resistant Zawiya, and by the rebels in taking over the port of Ras Lanouf — signaled an increasingly long and violent battle that could last weeks or months and veered the country ever closer to civil war.
Rebels in the east advanced from their stronghold toward Sirte, setting the stage for fierce fighting with pro-Khadafy forces that hold sway in the tribal area.
Western leaders focused on humanitarian aid instead of military intervention. The Italian naval vessel Libra left from Catania, Sicily, for the rebel-held port of Benghazi in eastern Libya, with 25 tons of emergency aid, including milk, rice, blankets, emergency generators, water-purifying devices and tents. It is due to arrive early Monday.
The crisis in Libya has distinguished itself from the other uprisings sweeping the Arab world, with Khadafy unleashing a violent crackdown against his political opponents, who themselves have taken up arms in their attempt to remove him from office after ruling the country for more than 41 years. Hundreds have been killed.
Khadafy has drawn international condemnation for his actions. President Barack Obama has insisted that Khadafy must leave and said Washington was considering a full range of options, including the imposition of a “no-fly” zone over Libya.
The Obama administration stepped up efforts Saturday to evacuate stranded foreigners and provide humanitarian relief. The State Department announced $3 million in additional aid for the International Organization for Migration, which is overseeing operations to return thousands of Egyptian workers and others from Africa and Asia who fled Libya and are now at the border with Tunisia.
Two U.S. Marine aircraft departed Djerba, Tunisia, for Cairo on Saturday with a total of 132 Egyptians. Two Air Force C-130 aircraft were en route to the border region to evacuate additional stranded workers, State Department officials said.
“It is a massacre”
The storming of Zawiya, a city of about 200,000 people just 30 miles west of Tripoli, began with a surprise dawn attack by pro-Khadafy forces firing mortar shells and machine guns.
Rebels claimed to be inflicting heavy damage on their better-armed opponents, saying dozens of Khadafy’s fighters had been killed. Still others were captured, they said, and were being held as prisoners of war.
“It is a massacre; they are striking civilians; they are attacking us from all directions,” Mohammed Ahmad, a 31-year-old doctor, said by phone during one of the attacks. Explosions and whizzing bullets could be heard around him as he spoke. “People are running around shouting, ‘God is great!’ You can hear the shooting everywhere. This is madness. Why is the international community not interfering?”
Abu Ala, a Zawiya resident in his 50s who declined to give his full name, said he had seen loyalist forces execute two rebels with their hands tied behind their backs Saturday morning.
“Today, I saw a heinous crime,” he said. “It was opposite my house, and it was shocking.”
Other witnesses who spoke to The Associated Press by telephone with gunfire and explosions in the background said the shelling damaged government buildings and homes. Several fires sent heavy black smoke over the city, and witnesses said snipers shot at anybody on the streets, including residents on balconies.
The rebels initially retreated to positions deeper in the city before they launched a counteroffensive in which they regained some ground, according to three residents and activists who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.
By midafternoon, the rebels had reoccupied central Martyrs’ Square, while the pro-regime forces regrouped on the city’s fringes, sealing off the city’s entry and exit routes, the witnesses said. Members of the elite Khamis Brigade, named for one of Khadafy’s sons who commands it, have been massed outside the city for days.
The pro-Khadafy forces blasted Zawiya with artillery and mortar fire in late afternoon before the tanks and troops on foot came in, firing at buildings and people, witnesses said.
Deputy Foreign Minister Khaled Qaid said “99 percent” of Zawiya is under government control.
“The situation in Zawiya is quiet and peaceful right now,” he said Saturday at a news conference. “We hope by tomorrow morning, life will be back to normal.”
Flying a pre-Khadafy flag
The rebels fared better in the east, capturing the key oil port of Ras Lanouf on Friday night in their first military victory in a potentially long and arduous westward march from the east of the country to Khadafy’s stronghold of Tripoli.
Witnesses said Ras Lanouf, about 90 miles east of Sirte, fell to rebel hands Friday night after a fierce battle with pro-regime forces who later fled.
“Go to Tripoli!” one of the fighters yelled in English.
Another brandished a bayonet, pointed to its blade and said: “I need head Khadafy! Head Khadafy I need!”
An Associated Press reporter who arrived in Ras Lanouf on Saturday morning saw Libya’s red, black and green pre-Khadafy monarchy flag, which has been adopted by the rebels, hoisted over the town’s oil facilities.
One of the rebels, Ahmed al-Zawi, said the battle was won after Ras Lanouf residents joined the rebels.
Al-Zawi, who participated in the fighting, said 12 rebels were killed in the fighting, in which rocket-propelled grenades and anti-aircraft guns were used.
Officials at a hospital in the nearby city of Ajdabiya, however, said only five rebels were killed and 31 wounded in the attack. The discrepancy in the figures could not immediately be explained.
“They just follow orders. After a little bit of fighting, they run away,” said another rebel at Ras Lanouf, Borawi Saleh, an 11-year veteran of the army who is now an oil company employee.
A witness in Ajdabiya said rebels had begun their push toward Sirte, reaching the town of Nawfaliyah, 50 miles from Ras Lanouf. The witness said he was going to join them and expected fierce fighting with pro-Khadafy forces.
Also Saturday, witnesses said a Libyan jet fighter crashed near Ras Lanouf. They displayed pictures showing the pilot’s body and twisted wreckage from the plane. The cause of Saturday’s crash couldn’t immediately be determined.
Pro-Khadafy forces have launched a number of airstrikes against rebel targets as they seek to put down the 19-day-old rebellion.
“Hope and fear in the air”
In Benghazi, Libya’s second-largest city, funerals were held for some of the 26 people killed in an explosion Friday at a large arms and ammunition depot outside town. The massive blast leveled buildings, cars and trees in an area three times the size of a soccer field.
It also deprived the rebels of arms and ammunition. It was not clear how the depot blew up, but suspicion immediately fell on Khadafy agents.
Hundreds lined the streets to pay their respects to the dead before starting chants against Khadafy.
In Tripoli, a tense quiet appeared to grip the capital one day after government troops fired tear gas and live ammunition at demonstrators.
Two residents reached in the city’s restive suburbs who have openly criticized Khadafy before declined Saturday to talk to a foreign journalist, insisting their phones were being monitored by the government.
A third resident, who asked that her name be withheld, said her family “was terrified” after a government crackdown on the capital in which security agents have reportedly sought out and detained suspected government opponents.
“We are afraid to leave the house,” she said, adding that there was a mixture of “hope and fear in the air.”
The Washington Post contributed to this report.
Arab-world developments
YEMEN: Party officials resign as thousands again rally.
Increasing pressure on Yemen’s embattled president, several members of his ruling Congress Party resigned Saturday as tens of thousands again took to the streets in several cities to demand his ouster and Britain warned its citizens against all travel to the impoverished Arab nation.
President Ali Abdullah Saleh, a key U.S. ally in fighting a potent al-Qaeda offshoot in his country, was refusing to budge and rejected a proposal from a coalition of opposition groups to end the political standoff by agreeing to step down by year’s end.
EGYPT: Protesters gather State Security documents.
Hundreds of protesters stormed the headquarters of Egypt’s widely feared State Security Investigations agency in Cairo on Saturday and began sifting through thousands of potentially inflammatory documents.
State Security was responsible for suppressing domestic political dissent, as well as for internal counterterrorism, and had a reputation for torturing detainees. The documents unearthed could provide a trove of information for cases against senior members of the government of ousted President Hosni Mubarak.
The evening attack on the facility in the Cairo suburb of Nasr City was the culmination of a wave of similar assaults over the previous 24 hours on State Security offices across the country, apparently fueled by rumors that officials had begun burning or shredding documents.
OMAN: Shakeup fails to assuage demonstrators.
Oman’s ruler replaced three top government officials Saturday, a second major shakeup that was celebrated by some protesters but failed to quell more than a week of widening demonstrations calling for jobs and political reforms.
The shakeup included the head of the Palace Office, which oversees security affairs, in an apparent attempt to ease calls to hold officials accountable for the killing of a protester last week. Also replaced was a minister who holds the most senior adviser post and another who deals with internal matters within the ruling structure.
The measures failed to halt sit-ins in the capital, Muscat, and the northern industrial city of Sohar, where the unrest began.
BAHRAIN: Shiites form human chain around capital.
Thousands of Shiite protesters in Bahrain formed a human chain around the capital Saturday as their campaign to loosen the Sunni monarchy’s grip on power in the strategic Persian Gulf nation enters its third week.
Tensions have been high in the kingdom, the host of the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet, since a street battle Thursday between Sunnis and Shiites left at least a dozen people injured.
No police were in sight as protesters — men and women — held hands to encircle Manama, where Bahrain’s Shiite majority has been leading daily demonstrations to end what they say are discriminatory policies and political persecution.
TUNISIA: 2,300 escaped inmates reportedly caught.
Tunisia’s Interior Ministry says that more than 2,300 escaped inmates, thieves and other troublemakers have been rounded up by security forces since Feb. 1. More than 9,000 prisoners have fled prisons in the unrest that followed the end of the regime of autocratic President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, who fled the country Jan. 14.
SAUDI ARABIA: Official warns against protests.
Demonstrations won’t be tolerated in Saudi Arabia and its security forces will act against anyone taking part in them, the Interior Ministry said Saturday, a day after about 100 members of the Shiite minority staged a protest in an eastern region of the kingdom. Security forces were authorized to act against anyone violating the ban, the statement said.
Denver Post wire services
