Libya forces battle Kadhafi diehards for Bani Walid
BANI WALID, Libya (AFP) - Troops of Libya's new regime were on Monday battling Moamer Kadhafi diehards for control of the ousted strongman's desert redoubt Bani Walid, with fighting focused on the airport..
National Transitional Council (NTC) forces on Sunday launched a fresh assault on the oasis 70 kilometres (100 miles) southeast of Tripoli, after being beaten back by loyalists a week earlier.
NTC field commander Salem Ghit told AFP that two of his fighters were killed and 70 injured in Sunday's battles, and that the offensive was continuing on Monday at Bani Walid's airport, on the southern edge of the town.
Another field commander, Jamal Salem, said NTC fighters had pushed towards the centre of Bani Walid on Sunday but had encountered "heavy resistance" from the Kadhafi loyalists.
The NTC forces mounted their fresh assault on the stronghold after first launching a barrage of artillery fire against the positions of pro-Kadhafi fighters.
Abdallah Kenshil, an NTC official, told local television channel Libya Al-Ahrar that the fighters had reached the town centre, but the claim could not be independently verified.
NTC commanders had pulled their fighters back from Bani Walid on Sunday last week after suffering heavy losses and to prepare for a new offensive against the 1,500 pro-Kadhafi fighters thought to remain there.
Meanwhile fighting has died down in Sirte on the Mediterranean coast, where fierce clashes between NTC forces and those loyal to deposed leader Kadhafi had raged for a month, AFP correspondents said.
Salem Ahmed, a tank commander from the eastern city of Benghazi, said the advance was being held up by pro-Kadhafi snipers.
"A few snipers can stop an army. They are very professional. They shoot in the heart, the head, the chest," he insisted.
The focus of the NTC operations are two seaside residential neighbourhoods, the Dollar and Number Two, where Kadhafi loyalists are holed up.
One NTC fighter told AFP there had been an exodus of civilians from the two areas Sunday and that the besieging troops wanted to give others the chance to leave.
The latest lull contrasted sharply with Saturday when Kadhafi loyalists mounted a fierce counter-attack in Sirte, forcing back the NTC fighters under a barrage of rockets and shelling.
Dr. Abdulsalam Abdelgani, a medic at a field hospital behind the eastern front line, said two NTC fighters were killed and 28 wounded in Sunday's fighting on that side of Sirte.
Abdelgani also told AFP he and his colleagues had found the corpse of a doctor who had gone missing in the nearby desert town of Bin Jawad, which fell to NTC fighters late August.
"We found his body in Sirte; he had been hanged," Abdelgani said.
Pro-Kadhafi TV channel Arrai, meanwhile, confirmed that Kadhafi's youngest son Khamis, who commanded one of the Libyan leader's most effective brigades, was killed in combat late August in Tarhuna, southwest of Tripoli.
It is the first time that pro-Kadhafi media has confirmed the death of Khamis, whose demise had been announced several times since Libya's conflict erupted but always denied by the ousted regime.
Kadhafi himself is in hiding as are two of his other sons, Mutassim and Seif al-Islam.
In the eastern city off Benghazi, officers of the former Libyan army on Sunday defended the institution's role in the revolution which brought down Kadhafi and pledged its support for the country's new rulers.
The military "fought alongside civilian revolutionaries right from the start of the uprising in February," insisted General Ahmed al-Gotrani at a conference on preparations for the formation of a new Libyan army.
"We backed up the revolutionaries with our experience, our advice, but also with arms and equipment," said the general, who stressed he was speaking on behalf of the whole army.
"Our army was treated with contempt and ignored by Colonel Kadhafi," Gotrani said, adding that "many soldiers were killed and sacrificed for the revolution."
© 2011 AFP