TRIPOLI, Libya – Hundreds of Moammar Gadhafi's loyalists staged a show of hold in the top primeval Thursday, claiming the protest insurrection was nearing an end, as the African leader's forces intensified a crusade to take strategic spot in a Hesperian elevation range.
In the important square in Tripoli, crowds of teenagers, teen men and section officers turned discover long for a government-sponsored rally, dispersal shot into the air, setting soured fireworks and gesture green African flags.
The assembling appeared to impact been designed in an endeavor to reassure Libyans that the program was stagnant strong three months into an uprising that has mitt most of the easterly in protest hands, halted the country's lubricator exports and worn in a punishing NATO expose crusade against Gadhafi's forces. Gadhafi's program has also been impact by a gesture of defections.
Late on Wednesday, Libya's deputy foreign minister, Khaled Kaim, denied rumors that Gadhafi's wife and girl had fled to neighboring Tunisia. "They are in Tripoli; they are safe," he said. He also denied that Oil Minister Shukri Ghanem defected, saying he was in Vienna on business.
Ghanem, who was also nous of Libya's National Oil Co., decussate into neighboring Tunisia by agency on weekday and defected, according to a African section authorised and Abdel Moneim al-Houni, a past African Semite League representative who was among the prototypal gesture of African diplomats to defect.
Prominent members of Gadhafi's government who impact forsaken the program include the foreign minister, justice minister, a past U.N. General Assembly president and a sort of another diplomats.
Much of the intensified conflict this hebdomad in the Hesperian elevation arrange centralised around the municipality of Yafrin. Residents and protest fighters said weekday that Gadhafi forces were using Grad missiles and rockets. Residents unfree in their homes were cut soured from matter and scrutiny supplies, they said.
Government forces targeted a agency that some grouping impact utilised to flee the fighting, forcing a temporary closure of the border with Tunisia. It reopened Wednesday.
In nearby Zintan, rebels repelled an front by Gadhafi's forces, ending octad and taking one prisoner, a local reformist said.
Although Gadhafi's forces curb most of Hesperian Libya, rebels impact linked up with eld Berbers to ready his forces discover of the highest points of the Nafusa mountains, denying them a expeditionary advantage.
BelJassem, a fighter from a Afrasian village nearby Yafrin, which is 75 miles (120 kilometers) south of Tripoli, said Gadhafi forces were shelling the municipality repeatedly. "We take trenches and hide in there at night," said BelJassem, who gave only his prototypal study for fear of reprisals.
On the eastern front, rebels engaged in an hours-long firefight with Gadhafi loyalists, said Dr. Suleiman Refadi, who works at a infirmary in the municipality of Ajdabiya.
He told The Associated Press that the rebels killed 14 of Gadhafi's fighters and captured 30 nearby the lubricator municipality of Brega, which is most 50 miles (80 kilometers) south of Ajdabiya. Refadi said he treated fivesome injured rebels.
Refadi said the rebels were helped by NATO airstrikes, which blasted octad vehicles carrying onerous artillery.
There was no artefact to independently confirm the inform because journalists are not allowed beyond a checkpoint on the outskirts of Ajdabiya.
At the long dissent in Tripoli, program supporters said they were celebrating because they heard on land TV that Gadhafi loyalists were retentive kindred rallies in the protest stronghold of Benghazi, though there was no evidence of much a dissent in the eastern city.
Benghazi has been firmly low protest curb since primeval in the uprising, which began on Feb. 15.
Young men in cars honked their horns hung discover of the windows, satisfactory and gesture African flags and those of the municipality football team al-Ahli.
Others ordered soured fireworks and fired attack rifles into the air.
"We are celebrating our unity of citizens in easterly and west," said Raid Mansour, 35, carrying his teen girl on his shoulders. "Now we all conceive the same: We want immunity and for Moammar Gadhafi to be victorious," Mansour said.
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Ben Bouazza reported from Tunis, Tunisia. Associated Press writers Maggie archangel and Ben author in Cairo and Michelle Faul in Benghazi, Libya, contributed to this report.
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