ZAWIYA, Libya — Libya’s rebels threatened to isolate Tripoli, Moammar Gadhafi’s stronghold, by blocking key supply routes and cutting oil pipelines Monday after a weekend advance put them in the strongest position since the 6-month-old civil war began.
In Washington, the Obama administration said the U.S. was encouraged by the rebel advances and hoped they had broken a months-long stalemate with Gadhafi’s forces.
“We are closing the roads for Gadhafi, so there is no way for him to bring anything to Tripoli,” said a rebel field commander, Jumma Dardira.
The rebels’ push into the strategic city of Zawiya on Saturday brought them within 30 miles of Tripoli, the closest they have ever gotten.
Also Monday, a U.S. military official said Libyan government forces fired a Scud missile for the first time in the year’s conflict with rebels. The official, speaking on condition on anonymity, said it landed about 50 miles from the town of Brega early Sunday and hurt no one.
Rebel and government forces have battled over the strategic port city, and control of it has gone back and forth between the two sides.
After three days of battles for Zawiya, a city of 200,000 on the Mediterranean coast, rebel commanders said they controlled the south and west of the city and were fighting for the refineries. Oil-rich Libya’s only functioning refineries are in Zawiya.
Nuri el-Bouaisi, an oil-production engineer in the city, said rebels had cut off pipelines that transport gasoline and diesel fuel to Tripoli.
“We shut down all four pipelines to Tripoli,” said el-Bouaisi, whose claim could not be verified.
The rebels are also determined to cut key supply routes to Tripoli from the Ras Ajdir border crossing with Tunisia in the west and from the south, where Libya borders Chad and Niger. These are critical lifelines with NATO imposing a no-fly zone over the country.
Over the past two days, a number of rebel officials have claimed that they either cut or were close to cutting those two routes. However that could not be confirmed.
The rebel advance was raising fears among Tripoli residents over the prospect that fighting might soon reach the capital. Long convoys of cars carrying civilians from the capital and other cities along the coast headed south to the western mountain range, a rebel stronghold near the border with Tunisia now considered a safe haven.
“We are afraid of whatever is coming,” said Mohammed Bilkheir, an accountant escaping Tripoli with his family. He said he was leaving to stay with relatives in the western mountains, fearing battles would break out in Tripoli.
Tripoli residents heading south said life was becoming increasingly difficult, with rising food prices, shortages of fuel and cash, as well as power cuts. Drivers took back roads to avoid being stopped by regime forces, they said.
In neighboring Egypt, the head of Libyan public security and a former interior minister flew in with nine family members on a private plane in an apparent defection. Nassr al-Mabroul Abdullah entered on a tourist visa. If confirmed, it would be the latest in a string of high-profile defections from Gadhafi’s regime.
