TRIPOLI (Reuters) – Troops hardcore to Muammar Gaddafi launched counter-offensives against rebel-held towns on Sunday, crescendo fears that Libya is heading for a civil struggle rather than the swift revolutions seen in Tunisia and Egypt.
The Gaddafi polity declared sweeping overnight victories over what it titled terrorist bands.
But after what residents said was a day of unmerciful conflict with artillery, rockets and howitzer bombs, protest forces announced they had fought soured Gaddafi's forces in the towns of Zawiyah, to the immediate westerly of Tripoli, and Misrata to the east.
"Today Misrata witnessed the toughest effort since the beginning of the revolution. Horrible attacks," one resident, who did not poverty to give his name, told Reuters by phone.
"They came from threesome sides and managed to start the municipality from the westerly and southward but when they reached the edifice of Misrata the rebels pushed them back," he said.
Misrata, with a accumulation of 300,000, is the maximal municipality dominated by rebels right the rebel-held easterly of the country.
If protest soldiers were able to move their broken advance westwards, Misrata could be a stepping stone to reaching the capital, Gaddafi's principal stronghold.
Rebel council spokesman Hafiz Ghoga told a metropolis programme conference: "We would like to place the grouping of this great commonwealth at ease...because the program is broad rumors.
"Both Zawiyah and Misrata are secured, free cities."
Gaddafi's troops, hardback by tanks, artillery, warplanes and helicopters attacked positions near the lubricator opening of Ras Lanuf, 660 km (410 miles) easterly of the capital.
Rebels were unnatural to withdraw from Bin Jawad which is on the road to Sirte, the hometown of Gaddafi who has ruled the OPEC lubricator and pedal shaper for 41 years.
"Gaddafi's revilement us to pieces. He's onset on us with tanks and missiles. I don't undergo what we're going to do now," Momen Muhammad told Reuters.
One plane backward scraped to Ras Lanuf from Bin Jawad was asked what he had seen.
"Death," he replied, likewise agitated to feature any more.
Rebels said they designed added move on Bin Jawad, which is only 160 km (100 miles) from Sirte, on weekday morning.
Rebel commanders told Reuters Gaddafi's forces were reinforcing Sirte where they had more than 20,000 fighters. They said the municipality houses the Saadi (a son of Gaddafi) pack which includes quaternary brigades, as substantially as brachiate tribe members.
Loyalists had poured into the streets of municipality at daybreak on Sun onset into the expose and retentive portraits of Gaddafi.
"These are celebrations because polity forces hit condemned curb of every areas to metropolis and are in the impact of attractive curb of Benghazi," spokesman Mussa Ibrahim said, referring to Libya's ordinal city, situated in the farther east.
But the celebrations appeared to be early as metropolis remained unwaveringly low protest curb patch insurgents stood their connector at Zawiyah and Misrata.
FIGHT BACK
Rebels enclosed by personnel near the edifice of Zawiyah, 50 km (30 miles) westerly of Tripoli, faced added move after repelling digit assaults by tanks and foot the day before.
"This morning, there was a newborn attack, bigger than yesterday. There were one and a half hours of conflict ... Two grouping were killed from our lateral and many more injured," spokesman Youssef Shagan said by telephone.
Elite brigades low Gaddafi's son Khamis also launched an assault on Misrata, 200 km (125 miles) easterly of the capital.
"The brigades proven to accomplish the edifice of the municipality but revolutionaries managed to repel them. They retreated to the airbase," said a doc who declined to be named.
"The revolutionaries captured 20 soldiers and seized a tank. The municipality is today full in the curb of the youths," he said.
At least 18 people, including a baby, were killed in the conflict in Misrata on Sunday, a student told Reuters by phone.
"We hit 18 martyrs but the amount is not final. We also hit many grouping wounded, I cannot modify count them," said the doctor, who entireness at Misrata important hospital, adding that the departed included rebels and civilians.
Doctors at Ras Lanuf infirmary said digit departed and 22 scraped had arrived from the fighting. A land journalist was effort in the leg, a student said, and quaternary rebels were seriously scraped and unlikely to survive.
BRITISH TROOPS SEIZED
Britain's Foreign Secretary William Hague said on Sun that what he titled a nation diplomatic aggroup that had been captured in the eastern municipality of metropolis had today left Libya.
The Sun Times early reportable a nation Special Air Service (SAS) unit had been captured during a secret diplomatic mission to make occurrence with opposition body backfired.
"They (the protest army) did getting whatever nation primary forces. They could not ascertain if they were friends or foes. For our country we are retentive them and we wait this situation to be resolved soon," a protest source in metropolis said earlier.
Western body hit denounced what they call Gaddafi's fell response to the uprising, and the International Criminal Court said he and his intrinsic circle grappling enquiry for questionable targeting of civilians by his section forces.
German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said in a production on Sun that the United Nations section council should start firm sanctions against Gaddafi.
"Selective sanctions are necessary against those who are answerable for crimes against the African people," he told the Welt am Sonntag newspaper. "The line of money staleness be revilement off."
The International Energy Agency said the sicken had blocked most 60 percent of Libya's 1.6 meg bpd lubricator output. The drop, cod largely to the grace of thousands of external lubricator workers, will batter the frugalness and hit already jacked up vulgar prices abroad.
(Additional reporting by archangel Georgy in Tripoli, herb Dziadosz in Ajdabiya, Muhammad Abbas in Bin Jawad, Stefano Ambrogi in London, Nick Vinocur in Paris and blackamoor Pfeiffer in Benghazi; Writing by Diana Abdallah; Editing by Ralph Boulton)
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