Facing little resistance, revolutionary fighters captured the airport and other locations in a southern desert city that is considered one of the last remaining strongholds of Moammar Qaddafi’s forces. Hit the jump to read the rest of the story.
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The capture of Sabha would be a major victory for Libya’s new rulers, who have struggled to rout forces loyal to Moammar Qaddafi a month after sweeping into Tripoli and forcing the ousted leader into hiding.
A push to capture Qaddafi’s hometown of Sirte and the mountain enclave of Bani Walid have stalled as well-armed forces loyal to the fugitive leader have fought back fiercely with rockets and other heavy weaponry.
“Our flags are waving there over the airport and other parts of Sabha,” Col. Ahmed Bani, the military spokesman for the transitional government, told reporters in Tripoli.
The airport is about four miles from the center of Sabha, 400 miles south of Tripoli.
Salam Kara, the Benghazi-based spokesman for Sabha’s local council, said revolutionary forces also had seized an old fort as well as a convention center and a hospital inside the city.
“It is a great achievement by the rebels from all over the south and led by the rebels from inside of Sabha,” he said, predicting more good news later Monday. “The resistance is not strong because Sabha’s rebels have been holding protests for a long time and just needed help from outside.”
Anti-Qaddafi forces also face fierce resistance in Qaddafi’s hometown of Sirte and the mountain enclave of Bani Walid.
Pro-Qaddafi fighters fired anti-aircraft guns at revolutionary forces holding the northern gate of a loyalist stronghold for a second day Monday, as frustration with weeks of halting advances grows among the former rebel ranks.
Anti-Qaddafi forces have been massed outside Bani Walid since shortly after Libya’s new rulers gained control of Tripoli and other parts of the country in August, leaving just a few major holdouts remaining loyal to the fugitive leader.
The official, trained military of the National Transitional Council, Libya’s interim government, pulled away from Bani Walid to regroup and reinforce for a new assault after they were heavily beaten in the city Friday. That has left bands of ragtag, undisciplined fighters on the front line.
These include fighters as young as 18 who spend hours smoking hash, shooting at plastic bottles, arguing with one another and sometimes just firing wildly into the streets out of apparent boredom.
When they decide to enter the town, they charge in in half a dozen pickup trucks only to retreat a short while later.
On Monday, three of their cars rode right into an ambush by Qaddafi forces on a street none of the outsiders was familiar with. One of their fellow fighters, Wassim Rajab, said he heard from comrades that four of them were killed.
Describing another typical attempt, fighter Lutfi al-Shibly of Libya’s western mountains, said, “We entered the city, 600 meters from the city center, but we didn’t have enough forces so we lost the position and had to retreat.”
The new leadership is facing a tough fight uprooting the remnants of Qaddafi’s regime nearly four weeks after the then-rebels rolled into Tripoli on Aug. 21 and ousted the authoritarian leader.
