BENGHAZI: Libyan rebels rounded up at least 63 people suspected of murdering their military chief and having links to Moammer Qaddafi, after an hours-long battle in their eastern stronghold of Benghazi.
Security forces patrolled the streets overnight in a bid to track down more members of the pro-Qaddafi group, a rebel spokesman said, as shoppers stocked up ahead of Ramadan, the Muslim holy month of fasting.
"We caught about 38 and later today more than 25," the spokesman, Mustafa Al-Sagazly, told AFP late on Sunday.
"Some of them ran away and we are trying to catch them all over the city," he said. "We are arresting them."
The arrests came hot on the heels of a five-hour raid by the rebel-backed February 17 brigade on a Benghazi factory, leaving four rebels and five Qaddafi loyalists dead.
Medics and rebels had said at least four rebel and 11 pro-Qaddafi fighters were killed in the fierce shootout, which erupted at around dawn on Sunday during a raid on the cell holed up at a license plate-making factory.
Rebel spokesman Mahmud Shammam said the group had been rounded up for its role in organizing a prison break in Benghazi earlier in the week.
The pro-Qaddafi cell "had plans to plant car bombs in Benghazi," according to Mustafa Al-Sagazly, deputy chief of the February 17 brigade.
He added the "very same group" — the Katiba Yussef Shakir — was suspected in the assassination of General Abdel Fatah Yunis, a right-hand man to Qaddafi before his defection to the rebel ranks.
Ismail Al-Salabi, who heads military operations for February 17, called the operation "100 percent successful" and added the rebels seized TNT explosives and several pickup trucks equipped with machine guns.
Meanwhile British Defense Secretary Liam Fox said the murder of Yunis, attributed by the British press to Al-Qaeda elements within the rebel movement, remained a mystery and that militant influence within Libya was inevitable.
"It’s not yet clear who actually carried out the killing," Fox said told BBC radio.
"Of course there are going to be militants in Libya — there are militants right across the whole of the Middle East — it would be a great surprise if there weren’t some in Libya itself," he added.
Britain last week recognized the Benghazi-based opposition National Transitional Council (NTC) as Libya’s legitimate government, and Fox vowed Britain would continue to back the group despite the assassination.
While the rebels have been trying to quash rumors about the mysterious death of their army chief, the Qaddafi regime said it was in contact with members of the NTC.
"There are contacts with Mahmud Jibril (number two in the NTC), and (Ali) Essawy (in charge of external relations), (religious leader Ali) Sallabi and others," deputy foreign minister Khaled Kaaim told reporters in Tripoli.
Qaddafi on Saturday night renewed his pledge "never to abandon" the battle, in an audio recording broadcast on state television despite NATO air strikes earlier the same day on the broadcaster’s headquarters in Tripoli.
Libya’s enemies would be "defeated in the face of the resistance and courage of the Libyan people," he said in a speech following the strikes which Tripoli said killed three journalists.
South of Benghazi, rebels reported an attack by pro-Qaddafi forces on the southern oasis town of Jalo, but said it had been repulsed.
Rebels also promised a "surprise" in the strategic oil hub Brega.
"We are in the suburbs of Brega and I can see its lights sparkling in the short distance. Expect a surprise," said Salabi.
On the western front in the five-month-old armed revolt, rebels on Sunday took the village of Josh at the foot of the Nafusa mountain range, AFP journalists said.
"We took Josh this morning and are now heading west. Now we’re fighting to take Tiji," further down the valley, Juma Brahim, head of the rebel fighters’ operational command in the Nafusa region, told AFP.
The Nafusa region has seen heavy fighting between rebels and forces loyal to Qaddafi since the insurgents launched a major offensive this month in a drive on Tripoli.
NATO said its warplanes carried out 50 strike sorties on Saturday, with hits in the areas of Brega, Zliten, Waddan and Tripoli.
France said on Sunday it was committed to striking Qaddafi’s military assets for as long as needed for him to quit power, and called on Libyans in Tripoli to rise up against him.
"We say to Qaddafi that we will not ease our pressure and to his opponents that we will not abandon them," French Defense Minister Gerard Longuet was quoted as saying by the newspaper Le Journal du Dimanche.
"Things have to move more in Tripoli… the population must rise up," he added.
