Moving up and down the highway that runs along Sirt’s southern border, rebel gun trucks maneuvered amid heavy shelling and sniper fire to pound elusive but deadly targets within Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s hometown on Sunday for the fourth day running – and with little success.
Over the weekend, after the expiration of a deadline for Gaddafi loyalists to surrender, rebel fighters pushed into the city with relative ease, only to be quickly repelled by pro-Gaddafi forces, suffering heavy casualties. On Saturday, rebel gun trucks took turns driving up a coastal hill to launch a barrage of rockets and heavy artillery at vague targets within the sprawling coastal town. But despite three NATO air strikes over the weekend, those inside the city center only fought back harder, and rebels failed to penetrate their defenses. By Sunday night, with morale failing, some rebel fighters had begun to speak of pulling back even further, ostensibly to give families time to flee – even though the city’s residents had been moving out in a steady stream for days.(See photos of Libyan rebels taking over Tripoli.)
Sirt cuts the vast territory now held by the Libyan rebels’ U.N.-recognized National Transitional Council (NTC) in half. And as one of the last remaining regime strongholds, it may become one of Libya’s fiercest fights yet. The NTC fighters say that a mix of mercenary fighting power and regime propaganda has kept the port city firmly out of their reach. But that town has also produced few rebels; the forces attacking the city are hobbled by a lack of familiarity with the streets within, and some said they were frustrated by what they claimed was an attempt by loyalist forces to use civilians as human shields. “They put families in front of them. And we cannot kill the children or the women because we are not killers,” said Khaled al-Ogaab, a fighter from Misratah.
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