Libya Fighting Rages Amid Conflicting Reports on Rebels Fleeing

 

Rebel fighters gear up on the main highway awaiting a rumored Libyan Army advance between the crucial towns of Ajdabiyah and Brega, Libya, on April 11, 2011. Photographer: Chris Hondros/Getty Images

Fighting raged around the Libyan cities of Misrata and Ajdabiya amid conflicting reports that rebels trying to oust Muammar Qaddafi were fleeing.
Rebels in pickup trucks mounted with machine guns were running away from Ajdabiya, according to the New York Times and the Associated Press, while Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya television networks said the rebels had halted Qaddafi’s forces at the Western gate of the city. All the news services have correspondents on the scene.
Shelling in Misrata, the main rebel-held city in the west and Libya’s third-largest city, has killed five people and injured 47 since yesterday, Al-Jazeera reported. Qaddafi’s forces have fired rockets and cluster bombs into residential areas, according to the New York Times and Human Rights Watch.
“The rebels don’t have the logistics or organization to move forward with major objectives at this time,” said Andrew Terrill, a Middle East specialist at the Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. “Unless we see large scale surrender from Qaddafi loyalists, I don’t see too many cities changing hands.”
With NATO air attacks on Qaddafi’s troops and supplies slowly crippling his war machine, “time is much more on the rebels’ side,” said Terrill. “The rebels are getting stronger and Qaddafi is getting weaker; I don’t see the urgency of mounting an offensive.”

Heavy Weapons

Libyan rebels expect to receive heavy weapons in their battle to overthrow Qaddafi, a spokesman for the rebels’ National Transitional Council, Abdul Hafiz Ghoga, said April 17. The rebels have struggled for weeks to take and hold cities in central Libya, which have been the focus of most of the fighting since the uprising began in February. Continued