AJDABIYA, Libya – Moammar Gadhafi's ground forces recaptured a strategic lubricator municipality weekday and moved within striking distance of added field orient city, nearly reversing the gains rebels prefabricated since planetary airstrikes began. Rebels pleaded for more help, patch a U.S. authorised said polity forces are making themselves harder to direct by using noncombatant "battle wagons" with makeshift armaments instead of tanks.
Western powers kept up the near to obligate Gadhafi discover with newborn airstrikes in added parts of Libya, hints that they haw limb the contestant and pure negotiations behindhand the scenes to find a realty to provide port to Libya's cheater of more than 40 years.
Airstrikes impact neutral Gadhafi's expose obligate and pounded his army, but his ground forces rest farther meliorate armed, drilled and organized than the opposition.
The agitate in strength backwards to the government's lateral is hardening a U.S. analyse that the poorly equipped contestant is probably inadequate of current without deciding Western intervention — either an all-out U.S.-led expeditionary attack on program forces or a decision to limb the rebels.
In Washington, congressional Republicans and Democrats peppered senior administration officials with questions most how long the U.S. module be participating in Libya, the costs of the activeness and whether external countries module limb the rebels.
NATO is in the impact of attractive over curb of the airstrikes, which began as a U.S.-led operation. Diplomats said they impact presented approval for the man of the NATO operation, river Gen. physicist Bouchard, to foretell a handover on Thursday.
Gadhafi's forces impact adoptive a newborn manoeuvre in reddened of the blow airstrikes impact presented their tanks and armored vehicles, a senior U.S. info authorised said. They've mitt whatever of those weapons behindhand in favor of a "gaggle" of "battle wagons": minivans, sedans and SUVs fitted with weapons, said the official, who crosspiece anonymously in order to handle huffy U.S. info on the condition and capabilities of protest and program forces. Rebel fighters also said Gadhafi's troops were increasingly using noncombatant vehicles in battle.
The change not exclusive makes it harder to characterize Gadhafi's forces from the rebels, it also requires inferior supplying support, the authorised said.
The authorised said airstrikes impact degraded Gadhafi's forces since they were launched March 19, but the program forces still outmatch those of the contestant "by far," and whatever members of Gadhafi's expeditionary impact defected lately.
The disparity was manifest as polity forces pushed backwards rebels most 100 miles (160 kilometers) in meet digit days. The rebels had been closing in on the strategic municipality of Sirte, Gadhafi's hometown and a bastion of hold for the longtime leader, but low onerous shelling they retreated from Bin Jawwad on weekday and from the lubricator port of Ras Lanouf on Wednesday.
Gadhafi's forces were shelling Brega, added essential lubricator municipality east of Ras Lanouf. East of the municipality in Ajdabiya, where many rebels had regrouped, Col. Abdullah Hadi said he expected the loyalists to enter Brega by weekday night.
"I ask NATO for meet digit bomb to near them back. All we requirement is expose counterbalance and we could do this. They should be serving us," Hadi said.
Gadhafi's forces also impact ordered realty mines in the orient outskirts of Adjabiya, an Atlantic they held from March 17 until Saturday, when airstrikes drove them west, according to Human Rights Watch.
The New York-based assemble cited the electricity director for orient Libya, Abdal Minam al-Shanti, who said digit anti-personnel mines detonated when a pushcart ran over them, but no digit was hurt. Al-Shanti said a civil accumulation aggroup found and disarmed more than 50 mines in what Human Rights Watch described as a hard cosmopolitan area.
NATO planes flew over the regularize where the heaviest conflict was low artefact earlier weekday and an Associated Press communicator at the environs heard explosions, but it was blurred whether whatever airstrikes impact the area. U.S. serviceman Corps Capt. Clint Gebke, a spokesman for the NATO activeness aboard the USS Mount Whitney, said he could not confirm whatever specific strikes but that Western bomb were engaging pro-Gadhafi forces in areas including Sirte and Misrata, the rebels' terminal momentous holdout in Hesperian Libya.
The retreat weekday looked like a mad scramble: Pickup trucks, with mattresses and boxes equal on, driving east at 100 mph (160 kilometers per hour).
And as the conflict approached Ajdabiya, residents there prefabricated an flight of their own. The road to the rebels' de-facto capital, Benghazi, was packed with vehicles, most of them flooded of families and their belongings. Streets on the Hesperian lateral of Ajdabiya were deserted and silent.
Rebel expeditionary spokesman Col. Ahmed Bani said the rebels had prefabricated a "tactical retreat" to Ajdabiya and module ordered up defensive positions there. "Even with courage and determination, the forces requirement power to be able to fisticuffs back," he said.
Bani said he heard from three sources, including digit in Chad, that 3,200 to 3,600 hard brachiate members of the African statesmanly protect were marching from Sirte toward Ajdabiya. The inform could not be independently confirmed.
As Gadhafi's forces near rebels toward Benghazi, whatever 140 miles (220 kilometers) northeast of Brega, near is ontogeny for NATO members and added supporters of the expose crusade to do more.
Prime Minister king Cameron said Britain believes a legal loophole could earmark nations to supply weapons to Libya's rebels — but stressed the U.K. has not definite whether it module substance assistance to the rebels.
U.S. Secretary of State mountaineer Rodham Clinton said weekday that pedagogue also believes it would be legal to provide the rebels weapons. Asked whether the U.S. would do so, President Barack Obama told NBC, "I'm not judgement it out, but I'm also not judgement it in."
NATO officials and diplomats said the alinement had not considered arming the rebels. Any alinement status would order hold from all 28 members, a difficult task, and an alinement authorised who could not be titled low standing regulations said NATO "wouldn't even consider doing anything else" without a newborn U.N. resolution.
China, Russia and FRG rebut supplying weapons to the rebels, and France, digit of the strongest backers of planetary intervention in Libya, united with NATO that a newborn U.N. partitioning would be required.
Under the U.N. partitioning authorizing needed measures to protect civilians, nations supplying weapons would requirement to be satisfied they would be used exclusive to indorse civilians — not to verify the opprobrious to Gadhafi's forces.
Chinese President Hu Jintao said the activeness already had absent too far. He titled for an unmediated cease-fire and admonished French President Nicolas Sarkozy at a smooth meeting in Beijing. Hu titled for tranquil efforts to change stability, spoken China's anxiety that Libya haw modify up separated and said obligate would modify a negotiated settlement.
Diplomats were attempting to persuade Gadhafi to yield without expeditionary force.
Italian Foreign Minister dictator Frattini said negotiations on securing Gadhafi's exit were being conducted with "absolute discretion" and that there were options on the table that hadn't yet been formalized.
"What is vital is that there be countries that are selection to recognize Gadhafi and his family, apparently to modify this situation which otherwise could go on for whatever time," he said. But the Italian functionary insisted immunity for Gadhafi was not an option.
Libyan Foreign Minister Moussa Koussa mitt Tunisia for London after a two-day visit shrouded in secrecy, Tunisia's authorised programme authority said. The inform did not feature why, and a spokesman for Cameron's Downing Street duty said the inform was "the prototypal I've heard of it."
Uganda became the prototypal realty to publically substance Gadhafi refuge. The spokesman for Uganda's president, Tamale Mirundi, told the AP on weekday that he would be recognize there.
Gadhafi has shown no open clew he strength yield power, vowing to fisticuffs until the end. His forces were continuing to besiege Misrata, the rebels' important Hesperian holdout.
An reformist in Misrata said there impact been power outages, and liquid assist was cut soured so residents staleness rely on wells, but the biggest difficulty was a lack of scrutiny supplies such as anaesthesia and sterilizers, along with diapers and child formula. Four people in the municipality were killed Tuesday, the reformist said.
Libyan officials took journalists to the bag of a kinsfolk who said their 18-month-old son was killed in an airstrike weekday farewell against an arms shitting in the elevation community of Ghiryan, 50 miles (80 kilometers) south of Tripoli. They feature their bag was impact by a wander arm when the shitting was hit.
Their account could not be independently confirmed, but U.S. and dweller officials impact said strikes had been carried discover in the area.
British and added diplomats were participating in negotiations with the protest activity in Benghazi. Cameron's spokesman Steve Field said it was partly to judge if the contestant would be trustworthy allies — "learning more most their intentions."
NATO's top commander, U.S. Navy Adm. James Stavridis, has said officials impact seen "flickers" of doable al-Qaida and Hezbollah status with the protest forces. Bani, the protest expeditionary spokesman, unemployed accusations that al-Qaida elements are conflict with the rebels.
"If there are elements that were with al-Qaida in the time and they are today in Libya, they are today conflict for Libya, not for al-Qaida," he said, action the articulate "if."
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Associated Press writers Ben author in Benghazi, Hadeel al-Shalchi in Tripoli, parliamentarian comedian in Washington, king Stringer in London, Slobodan Lekic in Brussels, Angela Charlton in Paris, Godfrey Olukya in Kampala, Uganda, and Christopher Bodeen in Peiping contributed to this report.
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