| Submit your comments on this article |
| Africa North |
| Libya: Bani Walid 'built for last stands' |
| 2011-09-26 |
| With its severe geography exposing any attacker to raking gunfire, the town southeast of Tripoli was one of the last places to fall to Italian colonialist troops last century and has long been known as a refuge for defenders. Bani Walid was "built for last stands," said Geoff Porter, an independent U.S. expert on North African politics. The town is strung along the tops of a rang of hills, geography that compels attackers advancing from the north to traverse a gully, exposing them to withering gunfire. Chaotic organization, lack of leadership and factional rivalries have wrecked the cohesion of the anti-Gaddafi push on the town, turning their assaults into debacles. Brigadier Benjamin Barry, a former British army officer and now Land warfare expert at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said a siege might work, or, if civilians have fled, an assault by a professional military equipped with tanks and heavy armor. "The consensus amongst military professionals would be that if there is no other way to persuade defenders who know their business to abandon a defended town, there is no alternative to a combined arms assault by well trained infantry supported by tanks, artillery and sappers," he told Reuters. |
| Posted by:Anguper Hupomosing9418 |
| #1 A siege might not work, but it probably would. |
| Posted by: phil_b 2011-09-26 07:38 |