RETREAT FROM RAS LANUF
Today, in the Libyan desert, as sundown approached and the air became cold, the rebel front line at Ras Lanuf, an oil town west of Benghazi, seemed to crumble. Hundreds of rebels who had been manning defenses outside Ras Lanuf began to retreat as artillery shells rained in and jet fighters dropped bombs, hitting its mosque and landing next to its hospital. (The town itself was mostly deserted.) The deadly sound of shells striking the ground in repetition seemed to be coming closer. In the latest of many exoduses along the road in recent days, pickup after pickup, spray-painted with revolutionary graffiti, roared past carrying the wounded and, in some cases, dead fighters. They were headed toward the nearest hospital, in Brega, another oil town, some ninety miles away. (A fighter plane dropped a bomb at Brega, too, this morning, not long before we drove by; no one was killed, evidently, but it sent an ominous signal that Qaddafi’s regime had not forgotten the rearguard town.)
Gone was the festive spirit, the singing and posing with weapons that had characterized the advancing shabbab of a week ago, though they still fired their weapons in the air. Most of the young volunteer fighters seemed tense and angry, and a few were out of control. I watched one man in the distance throw a tantrum, screaming loudly in the middle of the road, apparently upset at the retreat. The remaining anti-aircraft batteries began shooting, and a panic ensued when some people thought they spotted a jet fighter. I had to dodge a flurry of large brass shell casings that spat off a heavy machine firing near me.
An hour or so before nightfall, a wave of hysteria went through the fallback lines on the road in front of Ras Lanuf’s refinery as men standing on a rooftop shouted that they could see the enemy approaching over the nearest hill. I looked at the crest and thought I could see, a mile or so away, four bump-like shapes that had not been there before. (Later, a British reporter told me that his cameraman, using a long lens, had clearly seen four tanks.)
On our way back to Brega, we stopped to have a final look at the besieged rebel line in the distance: Most of the fighters seemed to have gone. As darkness fell, my friends and I exchanged speculation as to whether Brega, which has been in rebel hands since March 2nd, would now become the new rebel front line—and how long it would hold.
The atmosphere is supercharged with contradictory news and portents. Just as word came in of the government’s devastating assault on the rebellious western city of Zawiya, and its apparent seizure by Qaddafi’s troops, people here heard that France had recognized the acting government of rebel-held Libya—the National Council—as the legitimate Libyan government. This buoyed spirits, but what it might signify was difficult to gauge.
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