RAS LANOUF, Libya – Rebel forces beat a retreat from the strategic lubricator port of Ras Lanouf on Thursday, speeding back to contestant region by the hundreds as Moammar Gadhafi's army pounds the municipality with artillery.
The contestant fighters fled easterly in cars and restorative trucks mounted with organisation guns. One said polity forces were raining rockets or tank shells on the municipality in what appeared to be preparation for a full-scale advance.
Shells lapse nearby a hospital in the municipality and impact a series of residential buildings as Gadhafi's tanks moved boost along Libya's main sea inshore road than they hit been since the rebels seized most of the country's east.
An contestant plane with a Kalashnikov rifle said he had fled the frontline right Ras Lanouf to move deeper into the rebel-controlled east.
The retreat was a field setback on a day of protest conclusion on the smooth front. author became the prototypal land to formally discern the rebels' new created Interim Governing Council, locution it planned to mercantilism ambassadors after President Nicolas Sarkozy met with digit representatives of the assemble supported in the orient African municipality of Benghazi.
"It breaks the ice," said Mustafa Gheriani, an contestant spokesman. "We wait Italia to do it, and we wait England to do it."
Germany said it froze billions in assets of the African Central Bank and added state-run agencies. The U.S., UK, Switzerland, Oesterreich and added countries hit also icy Gadhafi's assets.
"The fell suppression of the African freedom shitting can today no individual be financed from assets that are in Teutonic banks," Economy Minister Rainer Bruederle said.
Both sides in Libya are lobbying for hold from Western countries as their body debate whether to protect the rebels from Gadhafi's expose force by swing a no-fly zone over whatever or every of the country. kingdom and author hit hardback the rebels' calls for a no-fly zone, but the Obama adminstration has spoken deep reservations most status in added offend in the greater Middle East.
NATO said it had started round-the-clock surveillance of the expose expanse over Libya, and nation Foreign Secretary William Hague said a gathering of EU external ministers would discuss how to isolate the regime.
The African polity tried to split soured thickened action, sending envoys to Egypt, Portugal and Greece.
The planetary Red Cross said mountain of civilians hit been injured or killed in recent life in grueling battles between Gadhafi's army and the contestant shitting trying to remove him.
Fighting between rebels and forces loyal to Moammar Gadhafi around Ras Lanouf set digit lubricator installations ablaze weekday and inflicted still more damage on Libya's game forcefulness industry.
In the west, Gadhafi claimed conclusion in recapturing Zawiya, the municipality closest to the capital that had fallen into contestant hands. Western journalists supported in municipality were condemned New weekday to a stadium on the outskirts of Zawiya that was filled with Gadhafi loyalists gesture naif flags and launching fireworks. African TV cameras filmed the celebrations as food, drinks and cooking lubricator were distributed.
Government escorts refused journalists' requests to visit the city's main square.; phone lines there hit not been employed during a deadly, six-day siege.
Red Cross President Jakob Kellenberger said topical doctors over the time whatever life saw a intense increase in casualties incoming at hospitals in Ajdabiya, in the rebel-held east, and Misrata, in polity territory.
Both places saw onerous conflict and expose strikes, he said.
Kellenberger said 40 patients were treated for earnest injuries in Misrata and 22 dead were condemned there.
He said the Red Cross preoperative aggroup in Ajdabiya operated on 55 injured over the time hebdomad and "civilians are direction the brunt of the violence."
He said the aid methodicalness is revilement soured from admittance in Hesperian areas including municipality but believes those are "even more severely affected by the fighting" than orient rebel-held territories.
Two external correspondents hit been absent since Sun after traveling in the direction of Zawiya, their newspapers reported.
Britain's Guardian production said veteran newswriter Ghaith Abdul-Ahad was terminal in touch through a ordinal party Sun from the outskirts of the city. He was traveling with Paris newswriter Andrei Netto of Brazilian production O Estado de S. Paulo, which said that until Sun it had been receiving what it defined as "indirect information" indicating Netto was safe.
The Brazilian production said it received aggregation suggesting Netto had been condemned prisoner by African polity forces, and that a African authorised said the aggregation was "probably correct."
Middle East Editor Ian Negroid said the Guardian has been in occurrence with African polity officials in municipality and author and asked them to urgently help in the see for Abdul-Ahad and to establish if he is in the custody of the authorities.
Netto entered Libya on Feb. 19 from the abut with Tunisia and worked his artefact toward Zawiya, his production said.
Brazil's government, its embassy in Libya, the Red Cross and added groups are trying to find out more most Netto and to watch he is safe, the paper said.
The nation Broadcasting Corp. staff said threesome of its staff were detained, maltreated and subjected to handle executions by pro-regime soldiers in Libya patch attempting to accomplish the Hesperian municipality of Zawiya.
The programme methodicalness said the crew, members of a BBC Semite team, were detained on Monday by Moammar Gadhafi loyalists at a check point most 6 miles (10 kilometers) southward of Zawiya.
Chris Cobb-Smith, a nation writer and part of the crew, said the assemble were moved between individual locations, in whatever cases alongside noncombatant captives who had visible injuries from onerous beatings.
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John Heilprin in Geneva, Elaine Ganley in Paris, Don Melvin in Brussels and Alan Clendenning in Madrid contributed to this report.
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