[Bangla Daily Star] Libyan rebels were claiming victory yesterday in the battle for Brega as heavy fighting... as opposed to the more usual light or sporadic fighting...
ensued around the oil town amid reports four civilians were among the dead in a Nato air strike nearby.
Although there was no immediate confirmation of the claim Brega had fallen to the rebels, a correspondent at the scene saw seven bodies of pro-Qadaffy fighters and at least 10 burnt-out pick-up trucks along the road between Ajdabiya and Brega, 80 kilometres to the west.
A coalition air raid late on Friday killed 13 people, four of them civilians, some 15 kilometres east of the battleground town of Brega, a rebel civilian official told AFP.
The four civilians were an ambulance driver and three medical students from the second city of Benghazi, who were part of a rebel convoy of five or six vehicles, said Issa Khamis, liaison officer for the rebels' transitional government in the town of Ajdabiya, east of Brega.
The strike came as rebel fighters were shooting tracer fire into the air to celebrate the entry of an advance column into Brega.
"It was a mistake (by the rebel fighters)," Khamis added. "The aircraft thought they were coming under attack and fired on the convoy."
A spokeswoman for Nato, which leads the international coalition, said the alliance was concerned about reports of civilian deaths.
"We are looking into these reports," said Oana Lungescu.
"We are always concerned by reports of civilian casualties. Nato's mission is to protect civilians and civilian areas from the threat of attack," she said, adding no formal investigation had been launched.
Jubilant rebel fighters told how a strike by international aircraft took out at least two vehicles in a convoy of seven heavily armed pick-up trucks and they finished off the rest with rocket-launchers from their hideout in a eucalyptus grove overlooking the highway.
A crater, five metres wide and two metres deep, close by the wrecked trucks, marked where the rebels said the aircraft struck late on Friday.
Brega, 800 kilometres east of Tripoli, has been the scene of intense exchanges over the past few days when pro-Qadaffy forces returned after being driven out by the rebels.
But it has been unclear since Thursday who actually held the town with the rebel forces regrouping in Ajdabiya, 80 kilometres to the east.
Overnight, fighting flared around the rebel-held city of Misrata and air strikes were reported elsewhere in the country after Qadaffy's regime rejected a rebel offer of a ceasefire.
And at the United Nations
... aka the Oyster Bay Chowder and Marching Society...
, the thorny issue of Western governments arming the rebels set alarm bells ringing.
Coalition forces, meanwhile, strafed positions held by loyalist forces in the Al-Khums and Al-Rojban regions east and southwest of the capital Tripoli late Friday, according to Libyan state television.
An Al-Khums resident told AFP he heard kabooms coming from a local naval base, about 120 kilometres east of the capital, which had been bombed by coalition forces earlier.
Forces loyal to Qadaffy also attacked the third city of Misrata with tanks and rocket fire, a rebel front man said.
In the rebel bastion of Benghazi, Transitional National Council leader Mustafa Abdul Jalil said the opposition was ready for a truce, provided Qadaffy's forces end their assaults on rebel-held cities.
But government front man Mussa Ibrahim rejected the offer, saying Qadaffy's forces would not withdraw from towns they control.
"The rebels never offered peace. They don't offer peace, they are making impossible demands," Ibrahim told news hounds, calling the truce proposal a "trick".
| Of course. That's what a hudna is. And ten years maximum, don't forget, just like the Prophet Mohammed did. |