BIR AYAD, Libya — Rebels launched a new offensive Saturday out of their stronghold in the western mountains, battling regime forces in a drive toward the heartland of Moammar Gadhafi’s rule on the Mediterranean coast. The rebels are aiming to break a months-long deadlock and eventually fight their way to the capital, Tripoli.
Booms of shelling and rocket fire echoed from the front lines, centered on the town of Bir Ghanam, where rebel forces backed by tanks fought Gadhafi’s troops much of the day. Later, witnesses saw flattened buildings presumably targeted in NATO airstrikes and three smoldering government tanks in the town.
Rebels are hoping for a breakthrough in the far west, frustrated with the stalemate in the center of the country, where their underequipped forces have been unable to budge the battlelines despite five months of NATO airstrikes on Gadhafi’s military. Rebels control most of the eastern half of country, while Gadhafi’s regime holds most of the west, centered on Tripoli.
At dawn, thousands of opposition fighters pushed out of the Nafusa Mountains, a range near the Tunisian border, into the coastal plain toward their main objectives, Zawiya and Sabratha, two key regime-held towns on the Mediterranean west of the capital. Bir Ghanam, one of their initial targets Saturday, lies a little more than a third of the 50-mile distance to Zawiya.
Rebel commander Col. Jumma Ibrahim said opposition forces captured Bir Ghanam and had moved a few miles beyond it, as well as making advances on a separate highway to Sabratha. On that highway, rebels at one point were within 18 miles of the coast, but their convoy then came under heavy fire and they retreated, witnesses said.
“Now he can only defend himself against us,” Ibrahim said of Gadhafi. “Our main destination is Tripoli, but we cannot jump directly to Tripoli. We go one by one.”
At a forward medical clinic set up in the hamlet of Bir Ayad, south of Bir Ghanam, rebel gunmen burst out with shouts of “God is great” and mobbed a pickup carrying a captured Gadhafi solider. Two rebels shouted at the fighters not to harm him, though a civilian slapped him on the back of the head. The soldier, clearly terrified with tears streaming down his face, was wrapped in a blanket and driven away.
Despite the ambitious goals, the new assault is certain to hit tough resistance, as it would push right into the heartland of Gadhafi’s control. Zawiya, the rebel’s main target on the coast, was the scene of a major uprising by anti-Gadhafi activists early on in the conflict. The protesters took over the city and drove out regime supporters, but then were brutally crushed in a long, bloody siege.
The fighters Saturday were enthusiastic — most of them civilians who have taken up arms.
“We broke through the barrier of fear,” proclaimed Fakhredine al-Badrani, a 22-year-old computer student from Zintan. “Today, God willing, we will see a big victory.”
