Gaddafi human shields curb air strikes
2011-04-06 16:34
Ajdabiyah - Muammar Gaddafi is using human shields to foil air strikes on his forces, Nato officials said on Wednesday as rebels angry at alleged Western inaction battled anew to advance on the key coast road.
In their eastern heartland, ill-trained rebels set out yet again to retake terrain lost in several headlong retreats from Gaddafi's superior fire power, reporting heavy fighting west of their front line town of Ajdabiyah as both sides tried to end a ragged stalemate in the oil-producing state's civil war.
Mohamed el-Masrafy, a member of a rebel special forces unit, said clashes broke out at 06:00 (04:00 GMT) after government forces were resupplied with ammunition and swung eastwards out of the oil port of Brega, 80km from Ajdabiyah.
Nato found itself on the defensive against rebel complaints that air strikes had subsided since it took over the mission from a US-British-French coalition last week.
Spokesperson Carmen Romero maintained that "the pace of our operations continues unabated. The ambition and the position of our strikes has not changed".
She said that relieving the siege of Misrata, a rebel enclave in the west, remained the priority but conceded that Gaddafi's army was proving a resourceful, elusive target.
"The situation on the ground is constantly evolving. Gaddafi's forces are changing tactics, using civilian vehicles, hiding tanks in cities such as Misrata and using human shields to hide behind," Romero told reporters in Brussels.
She reiterated Nato's position that air power had destroyed 30% of Gaddafi's military capacity thus far.
Rough military balance Western air power has fashioned a rough military balance in Libya, preventing Gaddafi troops from overrunning the motley rebel force dominating the east - but not forceful enough for the insurgents to advance solidly hundreds of kilometres along the Mediterranean coast to the capital Tripoli in the west.
Masrafy told Reuters that the front line was about 20km east of Brega, the focus of a week long to-and-fro battle. A sustained government assault on Tuesday drove rebels about halfway back to Ajdabiyah, gateway to their Benghazi power base.
Tuesday's pullback "wasn't a full withdrawal, it's back and forth," said Hossam Ahmed, a defector from Gaddafi's army as pick-ups loaded with machine guns and rocket launchers rolled westwards while several families fleeing the fighting in cars packed with their belongings passed in the opposite direction.
Journalists were prevented on Wednesday from heading west from Ajdabiyah, making it difficult to assess the fighting.
Like other rebels, Ahmed expressed frustration at what he called Nato's hesitant approach. "There have been no air strikes. We hear the sound, but they don't bomb anything."
Said Emburak, an Ajdabiyah resident, chimed in: "What is Nato waiting for? We have cities that are being destroyed. Ras Lanuf, Bin Jawad, Brega, and Gaddafi is destroying Misrata completely."
French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said Nato operations were at risk of getting "bogged down" because Gaddafi's forces were making it harder for alliance pilots to distinguish them from civilians by hunkering down in populated areas.
He told France Info radio that he would address the issue shortly with the head of Nato, adding that Misrata's ordeal "cannot go on" but that "the situation is unclear".
Not firing near civilians Admiral Edouard Guillaud, France's armed forces chief, told Europe 1 radio: "I would like things to go faster but... protecting civilians means not firing anywhere near them. That is precisely the difficulty."
Misrata, under daily shelling, tank and sniper fire, is the sole significant population centre in western Libya - about 200km east of Tripoli - where a two-month-old popular revolt against Gaddafi has not been stamped out.
The inconclusive battlefield situation, defections from Gaddafi's coterie and the plight of civilians ensnared in fighting or running out of food and fuel has spurred a flurry of diplomacy in pursuit of a peaceful solution.
But such efforts have made little headway, with the rebels adamant that Gaddafi step down while the government, aware of the limitations of Western intervention, has offered concessions hinting at democratisation but insists he stay in power.
Nato's air strikes are targeting Gaddafi's military infrastructure but only to protect civilians, not to provide close air support for rebels, while enforcing a no-fly zone and an arms embargo under a UN Security Council mandate.
Some diplomacy addressed a more modest goal, a ceasefire.
Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu met deputy Libyan opposition leader Mahmoud Jebril in Qatar on Tuesday after receiving a Gaddafi envoy a day earlier in Ankara as part of a quest to bring about a truce in Libya.
"We heard their views on a possible ceasefire. We are looking at whether there could be common ground with Tripoli," a Turkish foreign ministry offical told Reuters.
A US envoy has also arrived in Benghazi to get to know the opposition and discuss possible financial and humanitarian assistance, according to a US official.
War in the vast North African state ignited in February when Gaddafi tried to crush pro-democracy rallies against his 41-year rule inspired by uprisings that have toppled or endangered other autocrats across the Arab world.
