Colonel Muammar Gaddafi launched fresh air strikes on rebel-held eastern Libya on Thursday as he marshalled his ground troops, humiliated on the battlefield the previous day, for a second offensive on the strategic oil town of Brega.
His air force, depleted by a spate of defections, attempted to bomb Brega's oilfield in what appeared to be a prelude to an all-out attack on the town. If Brega were captured, the move would allow Col Gaddafi to starve eastern towns and cities of electricity and petrol.
The rebel leadership in Libya's second city of Benghazi, 160 miles northeast of Brega, meanwhile braced itself for a fresh military onslaught by an enemy badly wounded but with vastly superior firepower.
In spite of a frenzied sense of expectation among Brega's inhabitants, there was no concerted attempt to retake the town's oilfield or airport yesterday. Col Gaddafi's troops appeared to be taking stock. A day earlier, these supposedly elite forces had suffered a chastening defeat in Brega's desert dunes at the hands of an ill-disciplined band of rebel irregulars who braved a barrage of artillery to push them out of the town. Time was now taken off to bury the dead from the day before. Coffins were borne through the streets of the nearby town of Ajdabiya by hundreds of men who mourned their slain comrades by firing repeatedly into the air.
Not all the dead were fighters. A list pinned to the wall of Brega's hospital bore the names of 12 fatalities, among them 14-year-old Hassan Amran Hassan. He had been grazing sheep with members of his family when pro-Gaddafi forces retreating to a nearby technical institute opened fire, killing him almost immediately.
"They shot at anything that moved," his father Amran Hassan Ali said. "We took cover, we couldn't move – we were too scared. We took shelter for over an hour. I was calling friends but everyone said they could do nothing to help and so no one came."
In a hospital bed in Ajdabiya, Hassan's twin brother Hussein, a bandage wrapped round his head, stared vacantly ahead, clearly still in shock. His seven-year old younger brother, Faraj, lay next to him, a bullet in his nose.
"Gaddafi is not a Muslim," Amran Hassan Ali said. "If he was a Muslim would he do this? Would he kill children?" Read More
"Gaddafi is not a Muslim," Amran Hassan Ali said. "If he was a Muslim would he do this? Would he kill children?" Read More
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