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GUALISH, Libya (AFP) – Libyan rebels on Thursday pulled back from an assault on a gateway to Tripoli and set their sights on the oil city of Brega, as NATO dismissed charges of having killed more than 1,100 civilians. "Yesterday, we got to within six kilometres (four miles) of Asabah, but most of our forces have returned" to Gualish, where rebels reversed a bid by loyalist forces on Wednesday to recapture the desert hamlet, said local commander Abdel Majid Salem. Asabah is strategically located 80 kilometres (50 miles) south of the capital, serving as the last barrier between the rebels and the garrison town of Gharyan. Salem said the bulk of the rebels had returned to "secure the area" around Gualish, some 17 kilometres (11 miles) further south, but that some fighters remained outside Asabah. On Wednesday, soldiers loyal to Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi caught rebels off guard and attacked Gualish, which the insurgents captured a week earlier, and seized most of it. But reinforcements poured in from villages and drove the loyalists out, chasing them up the road toward Asabah.
At least eight rebels were killed and around 30 wounded in Wednesday's fighting, said doctors at the hospital in Zintan, the key rebel base in the mountains southwest of the capital.
The eight killed, all but one of them young men, were buried on Thursday in Zintan, an AFP correspondent said. Mourners loosed off Kalashnikov automatic weapons fire as the bodies were lowered into the graves. In eastern Libya, rebels were poised to launch an offensive on the oil town of Brega, hoping to dislodge dug-in loyalist troops, rebel military sources told AFP. \One rebel fighter was killed and five more were wounded on Libya's eastern front line on Thursday, a doctor said in the rebel-held town of Ajdabiya, 80 kilometres (50 miles) from Brega.
