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Gaddafi's birthplace 'captured by FF' in battle for last Libya coast stronghold is.gd/JyQA7m #Libya
Rebels claim control of centre of Sirte after three-pronged attack with Gaddafi’s son Khamis said to be barricaded in at sea front
Libyan rebels claimed to have captured Sirte, the birthplace of Muammar Gaddafi and the last of his coastal strongholds.
The city was said to have fallen after an attack involving 900 “technicals” – armed pickup trucks – that attacked loyalist positions from three directions.
“Thwar Misrata (the Misrata revolution) now control the entrances to Sirte city,” said a statement from the Misrata military council.
The council, which controlled the operation, said the attack began at dawn on Thursday with an assault on the front line, 30 miles west of the city.
Gaddafi loyalists resisted with artillery, mortars and long-range grad rockets, but frontline positions collapsed in the early afternoon and rebel units surged eastwards towards the city.
More street fighting followed in the city, but by nightfall rebel units said they were in control of Sirte centre and the exit roads, and were “combing” urban areas for key Gaddafi officials believed to be in hiding.
Pockets of resistance remained, with loyalist forces surrounded in the city centre headquarters of an insurance company. Units of the 32nd brigade, commanded by Gaddafi’s son Khamis, were reported to be barricaded into a line of villas along the Sirte beachfront.
Nato reported destroying eight targets on Wednesday night part of a bombing campaign that has seen it strike 292 targets, including tanks, ammunition dumps, command centres and barracks, in the past three weeks. Alliance jets were in the air during the battle though it is not known if they struck targets today.
Nato is also anxious to get the war over, as its mandate runs out on 27 September, and France and the UK would prefer to have the war finished by then, rather than ask for an extension in what has proved a controversial operation.
Sirte, built near the site of the ancient Phoenician city of Macomedes-Euphranta, is one of Gaddafi’s key military hubs.
The coastal city was first targeted on 20 March, the second day of the air war, when American B2 stealth bombers destroyed 45 hardened aircraft shelters at Gardabya airport, which also served as a military airbase.
Rebel forces reported two fighters killed and five more wounded, but said the figure may rise as casualties return to bases and hospitals in Misrata, 150 miles to the west.
A Sirte rebel, who escaped the town on Monday to join opposition forces, told the Guardian that any attacking force must cope with the hostility of the Gaddafi tribe who remain loyal to the former Libyan leader and have formed bands of militias.
The conquest, if confirmed, represents a major victory for Libya‘s rebels; symbolically it is the crushing of Gaddafi’s authority. More practically, it opens the main east-west coastal highway, allowing the Benghazi-based National Transitional Council to move by road to the capital, Tripoli.
