SIRTE: Forces of Libya’s new regime on Sunday tightened their stranglehold on Moammar Qaddafi’s hometown Sirte, seizing its university and edging closer to his diehards holed up in a conference centre.
Fighting has been raging around Sirte’s university and the nearby Ouagadougou conference centre since the National Transitional Council forces launched on Friday what they are calling their final assault on the coastal city.
"We have taken the university… we have liberated the area from Qaddafi’s dogs," NTC commander Nasser Zamud said, as hundreds of his fighters roamed the campus.
"The fighting has been difficult; there were a lot of snipers," Zamud said of the assault on the university in the Mediterranean city’s southeast.
On Sunday morning, the NTC combatants were finally able to enter the university and its new campus, a huge construction site where Qaddafi snipers had been picking them off from unfinished buildings.
But an AFP correspondent said fighting was still raging for the Ouagadougou conference centre, an enormous rectangular building and its concrete bunkers, a key base for the pro-Qaddafi forces.
The ferocity of the Qaddafi forces’ resistance in Sirte and their other main bastion, Bani Walid, has surprised the new regime, with NTC chief Mustafa Abdel Jalil admitting the battle was "very vicious."
"Our fighters today still have to deal with snipers in high positions," he told a joint news conference in Tripoli late Saturday with visiting British Defense Secretary Liam Fox and Italian counterpart Ignazio La Russa.
Medics said six NTC fighters were killed and 99 wounded on Saturday, taking the toll to 23 dead and almost 330 wounded since they launched what they are calling their final assault on the Qaddafi bastion.
Thousands of civilians are still trapped in the former Libyan leader’s birthplace, and NTC commanders said they were pacing their advance to evacuate some of those who had not fled and to avoid losses from friendly fire.
One resident, Nasser Hamid, who was fleeing with his wife, three children and niece, said his family managed sneak out in their loaded car under the cover of dark early on Sunday.
"Our flat was destroyed by machinegun fire. We stayed in the stairwell. The children were upset because their toys were destroyed," Hamid told AFP.
"We waited so long because the Qaddafi loyalists said if we left, they would never let us come back."
His wife Salima Ali Omar said however that the forces loyal to the old regime appeared to be fighting a losing battle.
"The (Qaddafi) volunteers say they are fed up, they don’t want to fight any more. They are throwing their guns in the rubbish bins," she said.
Forces from Libya’s interim regime scored another strategic goal on Saturday, seizing a four-lane avenue which opens the way to a final assault on a key base of Qaddafi’s troops.
Attacking from the east, NTC fighters seized the road to the Ouagadougou conference centre after days of heavy pounding by NTC tank, cannon and rocket fire and ground assaults.
Naji Mismari, an NTC commander, said several Qaddafi loyalists were killed but without giving a number. "Their corpses are still in the houses," he said, adding that 17 trapped families were evacuated.
On the western front, fighting concentrated on the so-called 700-house complex where NTC forces fired RPGs and machineguns while Qaddafi loyalists used snipers and mortars.
"A sniper hit one of my men and the bullet went right through his head, killing him," said fighter Nabil Meftah.
The gains inside Sirte are seen as crucial by the NTC, which is awaiting the city’s capture to declare the liberation of the whole of Libya, clearing the way to draw up a timetable for elections.
The council has ruled most of the oil-rich country since its forces overran Tripoli on August 23, forcing Qaddafi and his inner circle on the run.
NTC commanders believe that one of Qaddafi’s sons, Mutassim, is holed up in Sirte and that another, Seif Al-Islam, once seen as the former strongman’s successor, is hiding in Bani Walid, possibly with his father.
New regime fighters have been stationed for weeks outside Bani Walid, a Saharan oasis 170 kilometers (100 miles) southeast of Tripoli, and the frustration is beginning to show.
"I want to fight but I am awaiting orders," said a young man at a mosque some 40 kilometers (25 miles) north of Bani Walid which serves as a base for the NTC forces.
Field commander Yusef Al-Sharif insists that the campaign for Bani Walid is progressing.
"Qaddafi’s men have left Bani Walid, they are fighting 10 kilometers (six miles) from the city centre," he said.
"We control 90 percent of the sector. We just have to push the pro-Qaddafi guys out of the outskirts and tackle the snipers."
