The new rulers of Libya are awaiting the capture of Muammar Gaddafi’s last strongholds to declare the liberation of whole of the country.
The new rulers of Libya are awaiting the capture of Muammar Gaddafi’s last strongholds to declare the liberation of whole of the country.
Fierce clashes took place on Sunday between fighters of National Transitional Council (NTC) and Gaddafi diehards.
In Sirte, the fighters made some gains as they captured Sunday the Mediterranean city's showpiece conference center, university campus and hospital.
The fortress-like Ouagadougou conference centre, constructed to host pan-African summits, had been a major objective of NTC forces since they launched a September 15 offensive on Sirte.
"We control 100 percent of the Ouagadougou centre," Mohammed al-Fayad, an NTC military chief told an AFP news agency correspondent on the spot, adding the capture "opens the way" for his forces to overrun the city center.
As he spoke, NTC fighters spread throughout the sprawling complex, tearing down portraits of the fugitive Gaddafi and the green flags of his fallen 42-year regime.
They later advanced another kilometer north along streets littered with debris and lined by pock-marked buildings towards the heart of the city.
NTC fighters also took control of the town's Ibn Sina hospital, whose upper floors were blasted. A massive firefight broke out near the hospital late on Sunday, with intense machinegun and rocket fire.
The NTC forces also seized Sirte's university and its new campus, a huge site where Gaddafi snipers had been picking them off from unfinished buildings.
Medics said 32 NTC fighters have been killed and almost 420 wounded since Friday when they launched a final push on Sirte after several days of NATO air strikes to soften up pro-Gaddafi positions.
On another front where Gaddafi fighters have put up stiff resistance, NTC forces took control on Sunday of the airport of Bani Walid, an oasis 170 kilometers southeast of Tripoli.
However, on Monday the NTC announced that 17 fighters were killed and at least 50 others were injured.
Seventeen fighters of Libya's new regime were killed and 50 wounded in clashes with Moamer Kadhafi loyalists in the desert town of Bani Walid, a military official in Tripoli said on Monday.
"We lost 17 fighters in fierce clashes on Sunday and our forces have withdrawn from the airport where they had taken control," said Salem Gheith, head of the National Transitional Council (NTC) military command centre.
The military spokesman for Libya's new leadership said NTC fighters also pulled back late on Sunday from forward positions in the town, 170 kilometers southeast of Tripoli, in what he termed a "tactical pullback."
"We've received reinforcements from Tripoli and the Nafusa mountains, and we will resume the offensive," he said.
Yunes Mussa, the NTC commander for the region, announced the capture of the airport on Sunday, before the fightback by pro-Gaddafi forces in Bani Walid, a holdout of the fallen strongman along with his hometown Sirte.
NTC commanders believe that one of Gaddafi's sons, Mutassim, is holed up in Sirte and that another, Seif al-Islam, once seen as the former strongman's successor, is hiding in Bani Walid, possibly with his father.
