Street battles raged in Tripoli between rebels and forces loyal to Muammar Qaddafi for the first time in the six-month conflict, as the government warned that attempts to take the capital would lead to bloodshed.
“Thousands of soldiers are ready to defend Tripoli, and many volunteers too,” Libyan government spokesman Moussa Ibrahim said today in a news conference in Tripoli aired live by international broadcasters. “Tripoli is well protected.”
More rebel fighters are on their way to the capital, Mustafa Abdel Jalil, head of the opposition’s National Transitional Council, told Al Arabiya television. “We will strangle Qaddafi’s troops tonight.” Rebels said they have taken the city’s eastern Tajoura suburb and the Fashloum area and the fighting has left more than 100 rebels dead, Al Arabiya said.
The rebel advance on Tripoli from the south and west follows weeks of stalemate. Qaddafi, who seized power in the oil-rich North African nation in a 1969 coup, has told his followers to keep fighting the rebels and to resist the North Atlantic Treaty Organization airstrikes, which began in March.
NATO aircraft today attacked Qaddafi’s headquarters in Bab Al Azizia, south of the capital, as well as Mitiga International airport where government fighters have posts, Al Jazeera said. NATO jets bombed a number of targets in Tripoli yesterday, including a military storage facility, a radar installation, and armed vehicles, the alliance said in a statement today.
‘I Am Their Father’
“The collaborators with the West are moving from one town to the next claiming control, but they are not in control, they are escaping like rats,” Qaddafi said in an audio address broadcast early today on Libyan television and carried by Al Jazeera. “People are kissing my picture. I am their leader.”
“The subject of surrendering or raising the white flag is out of the question,” Saif Al-Islam Qaddafi, the leader’s son, said in a recorded speech on Libyan television aired by Al Arabiya. “If you want peace we are ready and this is an initiative for inside and outside” the country, he said.
The rebels are “armed gangs” motivated by revenge and lack a political plan, government spokesman Ibrahim said. They have raped women and carried out executions across the country and western leaders are “morally responsible” for Libyan deaths, he said.
U.S. State Department spokeswoman Beth Gosselin said the U.S. has seen press reports that Qaddafi and two sons have fled the country “but we don’t have any confirmation.”
‘Game is Up’
“The game is up but it could still be many days before we see any action,” said Shashank Joshi, an associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute in London. “The regime will exploit the terrain, urban positions, and the rebels might find a level of resistance they have not yet encountered.”
In Tripoli, thousands of anti-regime protesters took to the streets, braving snipers, the Associated Press reported. Rebels said they had captured dozens of Qaddafi troops, Al Arabiya said.
The rebels said today that they had taken over the Ras Jdir crossing on the Tunisian border, as well as the towns of Zuwara, Tarhouna and Zawiya, where they arrested Mahdi Al Arabi, a government commander, Al Arabiya reported, citing rebel leaders.
Zawiya’s refinery has a capacity of 120,000 barrels a day of oil, almost a third of Libya’s total. Libya’s biggest refinery, at Ras Lanuf, which can produce 220,000 barrels daily, stopped operating because of the fighting.
The International Organization of Migration is working to evacuate foreigners, many of them Egyptians, who want to leave Tripoli, the Geneva-based agency said on Aug. 19.
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