STF NA MÍDIA

after eight in the morning,"
said Nabil Darawil, wearing
a uniform of T-shirt and
baggy combat trousers. "We
captured one sniper but there
are a lot of them." It was at
least the third attempt to take
the town. Many residents
have fled.
Dr Wissam Abu Jarad, neat
in green scrubs at a roadside
clinic further north, treated
10 injuries and confirmed
four dead by mid-afternoon.
Inside his small building an
old man wept over the corpse
of his nephew as subdued
rebels milled around.
At the final checkpoint before
the town, rebel tempers
were running high. Three
young men, unarmed, dishevelled
and terrified, were
shoved into a dilapidated hut
and lined up against a breezeblock
wall. "Gaddafi forces,"
one of their captors
screamed. Outside, another
fighter whose brother had
been killed earlier, fired a
single shot over the head of a
news photographer.
Signs of chaos and bickering
were rife among the rebel
troops, who argued volubly
as the evening pullback was
completed. "Victory is certain,"
said Ramadan Abdul-
Rahman, a local man. "But
our forces do need to be better
organised."
Bani Walid, two hours south
of Tripoli, is the base of the
powerful Warfallah tribe, the
country s largest. If it and
Sirte were captured, only
Sabha, hundreds of miles
south on the edge of the Sahara,
would still be in the
hands of the old regime.
Hard news from Sabha is
rare, but a British military
spokesman said British jets
had fired two dozen Brimstone
missiles to destroy a
group of Libyan armoured
vehicles near the town on
Thursday.
On the Mediterranean coast
at Sirte, thick clouds of smoke
billowed from the city
centre, accompanied by frequent
detonations, as rebel
units attacked a series of s-
trongholds in the city. Nato
jets could be heard and in the
afternoon there were a series
of loud explosions.
After capturing much of the
city on Thursday night, along
with the strategic east-west
highway that runs south of
the city, opposition forces
pushed north into the city
and south into the hinterland.At
the highway intersection
turnoff leading to Sirte,
convoys of worn pickup
trucks with cannons and machine
guns rumbled into the
town. Columns of smoke
rose at intervals from the
city, hidden from view by a
wooded hillside.
Commanders said they launched
the attack after reports
that pro-Gaddafi militias had
begun attacks on the homes
of residents originally from
Misrata living in the central
District One. A relief force
broke through to them on
Thursday night, but retreated
in the early hours of Friday
morning, fearing their presence
would attract rocket
and artillery fire from loyalist
forces at the airbase and further
south.
Instead, rebels have switched
their attention to destroying
these forces, pushing out in
all directions south of the
coastal highway, and capturing
the well defended airbase.
Misrata Military Council,
commanding the operation,
said it expected to clear the
hinterland far enough to make
the city safe for units to
destroy strongholds of loyalist
troops based around an
insurance building and beachfront
villas.
The United Nations gave
strong backing to the former
rebels yesterday, handing the
National Transitional Council
the country s UN seat,
then lifting and modifying
some sanctions imposed on
Gaddafi s regime.
The General Assembly s vote
to accept the credentials of
the NTC gave its representative
the right to speak at the
UN. Libya s former deputy
ambassador, Ibrahim Dabbashi,
who early on denounced
Gaddafi and backed the rebels,
addressed the Security
Council hours later.
"Today is undoubtedly a decisive,
historic day in the life
of the Libyan people," Dabbashi
said. "It is an indication
that dictatorship has fallen, a
period of terror, of denial of
freedom, and of violation of
human rights has now come
to an end for the Libyan people."
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