@TripolieetFatma Ahmad
Libyan forces seize Sirte landmarks as battle for city nears end
Fighters take university district, main hospital and conference centre, the hub of pro-Gaddafi defences
Anti-Gaddafi fighters tear apart a loyalist flag at the University of Sirte after winning control of the area. Photograph: Saad Shalash/Reuters
Libyan forces loyal to the interim council appear to have taken key sites across the besieged city of Sirte, the last major stronghold of pro-Gaddafi forces.
Among the buildings captured on Sunday were the vast Ouagadougou Convention Centre, where loyalist fighters have held up attackers for weeks and the Ibn Sina hospital on the south side of Sirte.
By mid-morning, the sprawling conference centre had been abandoned by its defenders. Inside the five-hectare complex which has been the centre of the coastal town's defences, revolutionary fighters posed in halls scattered with debris and drove around in electric golf buggies and other vehicles they found inside.
Shattered plate-glass windows and pockmarked walls revealed the intensity of the past week's fighting. Some of the buildings had been blasted open by shell fire, and spent shell cases were scattered across the ground.
Inside the main conference hall, large signs declared "Shame on agents," and "Sirte is the summit of high hopes."
There was no sign of the defenders who have held out for days, with National Transitional Council troops saying that pro-Gaddafi soldiers appear to have fallen back towards the hospital, abandoning their vehicles as they fled.
"We went in without receiving fire from Gaddafi forces. There were many of our people inside," Ahram al-Jamal told the Guardian. "Now that we have captured the Ouagadougou centre, we want to finish it today."
From the conference centre, columns of revolutionary fighters were spreading out through Sirte, as the sound of gun battles and rocket-propelled grenades echoed across the city.
On the eastern side of town, at a luxury hotel which has become a staging post for forces from Benghazi, fighters said they had pushed forward to take new areas overnight.
But despite early reports of stiff resistance from loyalist positions, revolutionary commanders said many of their casualties had been caused by friendly fire.
Another landmark target for the new advance on Sirte, the university, had also been seized overnight, NTC forces in the east of the city said, although some came under heavy fire on Sunday morning and had fallen back.
"Last night, we were sleeping in the university and this morning we came under random strikes there," said a fighter who had withdrawn from the position.
"We have martyrs inside and we are trying to get them out."
The bodies of two men lay in a nearby field hospital, one with his face blown off. They had been hit by an anti-aircraft gun while trying to evacuate patients from a frontline hospital, their comrades said.
Lines of pick-up trucks mounted with heavy weapons waited to move up to take on a sniper holding up their advance.
The faltering struggle to capture Sirte and the other few remaining bastions of Gaddafi loyalists has sidetracked NTC efforts to set up an effective government in Libya and rebuild the oil production vital to its economy.
Sirte holds a symbolic importance because Gaddafi transformed it from a fishing village into a second capital. He built opulent villas, hotels and conference halls to house the international summits he liked to stage there.
But taking Sirte carries risks for Libya's new rulers. A drawn-out battle with many civilian casualties would breed hostility that would make it difficult for the NTC to unite the country once the fighting is over.
Thousands of civilians have fled Sirte as fighting has intensified, describing increasingly desperate conditions for those still inside the city.
There is no electricity, with water and food running out. At the city hospital, people have spoken of the stench of rotting corpses.
