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BENGHAZI, Libya—With escalating hostilities bringing Libya closer to civil war, Moammar Gadhafi’s forces struck back on three fronts, with special forces, regular troops and fighter jets, but the rebels repelled the attack in six hours of fighting, witnesses said.
The rebels, including defected Army forces and armed with tanks, machine guns and antiaircraft guns, fought back pro-Gadhafi troops, armed with the same weapons. There was no word on casualties in the rebel-held Zawiya, just 50 kilometers west of Tripoli.
Fighting a bloody rearguard action against the encroaching rebels, Gadhafi’s warplanes also bombed an ammunition depot in the east.
Gadhafi faced a growing international campaign to force him from power, as the United States announced it had seized $30 billion in Libyan assets and the European Union adopted an arms embargo and other sanctions, following the lead of the US and the United Nations.
The United States also moved naval and air forces closer to Libya and said all options were open, including patrols of the North African nation’s skies to protect its citizens from their ruler.
The European Union said it was also considering the creation of a no-fly zone over Libya.
In Moscow, a Kremlin source suggested Gadhafi should step down, calling him a “living political corpse who has no place in the modern civilized world,” Interfax news agency reported.
Powerful assets
“Gadhafi has lost the legitimacy to govern, and it is time for him to go without further violence or delay,” US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said. “No option is off the table. That of course includes a no-fly zone.”
British Prime Minister David Cameron told lawmakers: “We do not in any way rule out the use of military assets” to deal with Gadhafi’s regime.
The attacks by Gadhafi’s troops on an oil refinery in central Libya and on cities on either side of the country unsettled rebel leaders and showed that the government may still possess powerful assets, including fighter pilots willing to bomb Libyan cities.
‘My people love me’
Rebel leaders said the attacks smacked of desperation, and the ease with which at least one assault, on the western city of Zawiya, was repelled raised questions about the ability of the government to muster a serious challenge to the rebels’ growing power.
In an interview with ABC News, Gadhafi laughed off a question about whether he would step down. He said he was fighting against “terrorists,” and he accused the West of seeking to “occupy Libya.”
He gave no hint of surrender. “My people love me,” he said. “They would die for me.”
Gadhafi’s remarks were met with derision in Washington.
“It sounds, just frankly, delusional,” said US Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice.
Gadhafi’s unyielding words and his attacks on Monday were met with both nerves and defiance by rebel leaders as the two sides seemed to steel themselves for a long battle along shifting and ever more violent front lines.
Gadhafi’s opponents, who started their uprising with peaceful sit-ins but have turned to arms to counter Gadhafi’s brutal paramilitary forces, have promised a large military response that has yet to come.
At the same time, government forces have been unable to reverse the costly loss of territory to a popular revolt that has brought together lawyers, young people and tribal leaders.
Arab unrest spreads
Across the region, the tumult that has already toppled two leaders and threatened one autocrat after another continued unabated on Monday.
In Yemen, protests drove President Ali Abdullah Saleh to make a bid for a unity government, but the political opposition quickly refused.
In Bahrain, protesters blocked access to Parliament.
In Oman, whose first major protests were reported over the weekend, demonstrations turned into violent clashes with the security forces in the port city of Sohar, and the unrest spread for the first time to the capital, Muscat.
Warplanes reappear
Libya itself seemed to be brewing a major humanitarian crisis as tens of thousands of mostly impoverished contract workers tried desperately to flee to its neighbors, Tunisia to the west and Egypt to the east.
The country they left behind faced similar uncertainty, as warplanes took to the sky for the first time in 10 days, according to military officials allied with the rebels.
In a direct challenge to claims by those officials, who have asserted that Libyan Air Force pilots were no longer taking orders from Gadhafi, two Libyan Air Force jets conducted bombing raids on Monday, according to witnesses and two military officers in Benghazi allied with the protesters.
Col. Hamed Bilkhair said that two MIG-23s that took off from an air base near Gadhafi’s hometown in the city of Surt, struck three targets, but the jets were deterred by rebel antiaircraft fire from striking a fourth, at an air base in Benghazi.
The jets—a bomber and an escort plane—attacked three other locations, south of Benghazi, and on the outskirts of the eastern city of Ajdabiya.
Bilkhair said that a weapons depot was struck, but that the other strikes—including one on a water pipeline—were “ineffective.”
Assault plan
For days, military leaders in Benghazi have said they are preparing to assemble a force of thousands to conduct a final assault on Tripoli. Some of the officials have even promised to send planes to bomb Gadhafi’s fortified compound.
But there are few signs that a plan has materialized, though military leaders maintain they are simply waiting for the right time.
The turmoil in the oil-rich nation roiled markets for another day. Libya’s oil chief said production had been cut by around 50 percent, denting supplies that go primarily to Europe.
The country provides 2 percent of the world’s oil, but concerns the unrest will spread to other oil-rich nations has sent oil prices rising worldwide. Reports from New York Times News Service, Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters
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The rebels, including defected Army forces and armed with tanks, machine guns and antiaircraft guns, fought back pro-Gadhafi troops, armed with the same weapons. There was no word on casualties in the rebel-held Zawiya, just 50 kilometers west of Tripoli.
Fighting a bloody rearguard action against the encroaching rebels, Gadhafi’s warplanes also bombed an ammunition depot in the east.
Gadhafi faced a growing international campaign to force him from power, as the United States announced it had seized $30 billion in Libyan assets and the European Union adopted an arms embargo and other sanctions, following the lead of the US and the United Nations.
The United States also moved naval and air forces closer to Libya and said all options were open, including patrols of the North African nation’s skies to protect its citizens from their ruler.
The European Union said it was also considering the creation of a no-fly zone over Libya.
In Moscow, a Kremlin source suggested Gadhafi should step down, calling him a “living political corpse who has no place in the modern civilized world,” Interfax news agency reported.
Powerful assets
“Gadhafi has lost the legitimacy to govern, and it is time for him to go without further violence or delay,” US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said. “No option is off the table. That of course includes a no-fly zone.”
British Prime Minister David Cameron told lawmakers: “We do not in any way rule out the use of military assets” to deal with Gadhafi’s regime.
The attacks by Gadhafi’s troops on an oil refinery in central Libya and on cities on either side of the country unsettled rebel leaders and showed that the government may still possess powerful assets, including fighter pilots willing to bomb Libyan cities.
‘My people love me’
Rebel leaders said the attacks smacked of desperation, and the ease with which at least one assault, on the western city of Zawiya, was repelled raised questions about the ability of the government to muster a serious challenge to the rebels’ growing power.
In an interview with ABC News, Gadhafi laughed off a question about whether he would step down. He said he was fighting against “terrorists,” and he accused the West of seeking to “occupy Libya.”
He gave no hint of surrender. “My people love me,” he said. “They would die for me.”
Gadhafi’s remarks were met with derision in Washington.
“It sounds, just frankly, delusional,” said US Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice.
Gadhafi’s unyielding words and his attacks on Monday were met with both nerves and defiance by rebel leaders as the two sides seemed to steel themselves for a long battle along shifting and ever more violent front lines.
Gadhafi’s opponents, who started their uprising with peaceful sit-ins but have turned to arms to counter Gadhafi’s brutal paramilitary forces, have promised a large military response that has yet to come.
At the same time, government forces have been unable to reverse the costly loss of territory to a popular revolt that has brought together lawyers, young people and tribal leaders.
Arab unrest spreads
Across the region, the tumult that has already toppled two leaders and threatened one autocrat after another continued unabated on Monday.
In Yemen, protests drove President Ali Abdullah Saleh to make a bid for a unity government, but the political opposition quickly refused.
In Bahrain, protesters blocked access to Parliament.
In Oman, whose first major protests were reported over the weekend, demonstrations turned into violent clashes with the security forces in the port city of Sohar, and the unrest spread for the first time to the capital, Muscat.
Warplanes reappear
Libya itself seemed to be brewing a major humanitarian crisis as tens of thousands of mostly impoverished contract workers tried desperately to flee to its neighbors, Tunisia to the west and Egypt to the east.
The country they left behind faced similar uncertainty, as warplanes took to the sky for the first time in 10 days, according to military officials allied with the rebels.
In a direct challenge to claims by those officials, who have asserted that Libyan Air Force pilots were no longer taking orders from Gadhafi, two Libyan Air Force jets conducted bombing raids on Monday, according to witnesses and two military officers in Benghazi allied with the protesters.
Col. Hamed Bilkhair said that two MIG-23s that took off from an air base near Gadhafi’s hometown in the city of Surt, struck three targets, but the jets were deterred by rebel antiaircraft fire from striking a fourth, at an air base in Benghazi.
The jets—a bomber and an escort plane—attacked three other locations, south of Benghazi, and on the outskirts of the eastern city of Ajdabiya.
Bilkhair said that a weapons depot was struck, but that the other strikes—including one on a water pipeline—were “ineffective.”
Assault plan
For days, military leaders in Benghazi have said they are preparing to assemble a force of thousands to conduct a final assault on Tripoli. Some of the officials have even promised to send planes to bomb Gadhafi’s fortified compound.
But there are few signs that a plan has materialized, though military leaders maintain they are simply waiting for the right time.
The turmoil in the oil-rich nation roiled markets for another day. Libya’s oil chief said production had been cut by around 50 percent, denting supplies that go primarily to Europe.
The country provides 2 percent of the world’s oil, but concerns the unrest will spread to other oil-rich nations has sent oil prices rising worldwide. Reports from New York Times News Service, Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters
[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]