BANI WALID/SIRTE, Libya, Sept 18, (Agencies): Libyan interim government forces fled on Sunday in a chaotic retreat from the town of Bani Walid, after failing in yet another attempt to storm the final bastions of loyalists of ousted leader Muammar Gaddafi.
Since taking the capital Tripoli last month, motley forces of the ruling National Transitional Council have met stiff resistance in Bani Walid and Gaddafi’s birthplace Sirte, which they must capture before they can declare Libya “liberated.”
Anti-Gaddafi fighters have tried several times to storm Bani Walid, 150 kms (95 miles) southeast of Tripoli, in recent days only to retreat in disorder under fire from defenders. Sunday’s failed attempt appeared to be among the worst yet, setting off angry recriminations among the attackers.
NTC fighters said they had planned for tanks and pickup trucks with anti-aircraft guns and rocket launchers to lead Sunday’s attack, but foot soldiers had piled in first.
“There is a lack of organisation so far. Infantry men are running in all directions,” said Zakaria Tuham, a senior fighter with a Tripoli-based unit. “Our commanders had been told that heavy artillery units had already gone ahead, but when we advanced into Bani Walid they were nowhere to be seen.
“Gaddafi forces were hitting us heavily with rockets and mortars, so we have pulled out.”
A Reuters reporter saw fighters withdraw around two kms (more than a mile) after they had stormed into the town.
Anti-Gaddafi fighters from Bani Walid blamed comrades from elsewhere in Libya for being unwilling to coordinate. Those from elsewhere accused some local fighters of being traitors and passing information to Gaddafi loyalists.
“Commanders who are from the Warfalla tribe, they tell us one thing and then commanders from the other cities say something else. We do not understand anything,” said pro-NTC fighter Mohamed Saleh.
“So we are just going in and pulling back without a single purpose. It’s impossible to take this city this way. It will continue like this until they send more experienced troops who know how to use their weapons.”
Some fighters openly disobeyed orders. In one incident, an officer from Bani Walid was heckled by troops from Tripoli after he tried to order them to stop randomly shooting in the air as they celebrated seizing a mortar from Gaddafi forces.
“You are not my boss. Don’t tell me what to do,” one of the Tripoli fighters snapped back at him.
Shells whistled above anti-Gaddafi positions and exploded across the desert valley as invisible snipers sprayed bullets from Bani Walid’s rooftops and smoke rose above the town.
NTC fighters helped some families evacuate from the town, driving them out in military pickup trucks.
“The past two weeks been awful but last night was particularly bad,” said Zamzam al-Taher, a 38-year-old mother of four. “We have been trapped here without a car and with no food. Snipers are everywhere.”
“The biggest mistake by the rebels is that they come in and leave without setting up checkpoints. When they leave, Gaddafi militiamen come in with their own checkpoints and flags and terrorise local people,” she added.
NTC forces and NATO warplanes also attacked Sirte, Gaddafi’s birthplace. Fighters launched rockets from the city’s southern entrance and traded fire with Gaddafi loyalists holed up in a conference centre.
“The situation is very dangerous. There are so many snipers and all the types of weapons you can imagine,” said fighter Mohamed Abdullah as rockets whooshed through the air and black smoke rose above the city.
Medics mopped the floor of a small field hospital on Sirte’s western outskirts as they prepared for more casualties, following bloody but inconclusive clashes a day earlier. A doctor said 16 NTC fighters and an ambulance driver had died in Saturday’s fighting. He had also received 62 wounded.
As in many episodes during Libya’s conflict, the frontlines at Sirte and Bani Walid have ebbed back and forth, with shows of bravado colliding with the reality of battle.
An incoming shell landed within 200 metres of NTC-held lines only to be met with return fire from NTC fighters shouting “God is greatest!”
Speaking against the roar of NATO jets overhead, one anti-Gaddafi fighter at Sirte, Mahmoud Othman, said his men were helping families who had fled ahead of the next assault.
“We don’t want any more bloodshed between us. But if the Gaddafa want more blood, we are ready,” he said, referring to the deposed leader’s tribe. “In the end we want Gaddafi.”
Scores of civilian cars and pickup trucks poured out of the city, with residents describing water and electricity shortages amid street fighting. Gaddafi forces were patrolling the streets in the centre, they said, making their lives a misery.
“People are living in terror,” resident Taher al-Menseli, 33, said as NTC fighters searched his car at a checkpoint. “Gaddafi supporters are trying to convince people the revolutionaries are criminals and that you have to kill them. Even if you don’t believe this, you have to appear convinced.”
Nearby, three young men knelt in the sand beside the road, their hands tied behind their backs. NTC fighters said they had found two assault rifles and ammunition in their car.
Gaddafi’s spokesman, Moussa Ibrahim, said NATO air raids had killed 354 people in Sirte on Friday night, an accusation Reuters could not verify without access to the city. A NATO spokesman in Naples said previous such reports had been false.
“We will be able to continue this fight and we have enough arms for months and months to come,” Ibrahim said in a call to Reuters via satellite telephone on Saturday.
British warplanes, operating under NATO’s UN mandate to protect Libyan civilians, bombed a Gaddafi ammunition dump west of Sirte on Sunday, after destroying an armoured troop carrier and two armoured pickup trucks in the Sirte area the day before, a British military spokesman said.
Cabinet
The unveiling of a new Libyan government due on Sunday has been put off “indefinitely,” Mahmud Jibril, the number two official in the National Transitional Council (NTC), said.
“The announcement of a new transitional government has been postponed indefinitely in order to finalise consultations,” Jibril told a news conference in the eastern city of Benghazi.
“I hope that the consultations will be over quickly,” he said.
Earlier Jibril had said that last-minute haggling had delayed the announcement of the new cabinet line-up.
Jibril, a former Gaddafi regime official, appeared unwilling to hold the news conference and only reluctantly agreed to address journalists.
“There has been agreement on many portfolios but there are still other portfolios which have not been debated enough and they need more discussions,” he said.
“But I believe that an essential part of these consultations was completed today.”
He said the NTC would also look into a list of “deputy ministers” in order to give a greater voice to women and young people.
“It has been generally agreed that youths and women should play a key role, at least as deputy ministers and directors general of cabinet ministries,” he said.

Syria
Opponents of President Bashar al-Assad vowed Sunday to continue protests until his “tyrannical” regime is overthrown, as the embattled leader praised Moscow’s “balanced” position on the unrest in a meeting with Russian lawmakers.
“We need to end the tyrannical security regime. We must overthrow the tyranny and the security (agents). We welcome all those who have no blood on their hands,” said Hassan Abdel Azim, a member of the opposition National Coordinating Committee for Democratic Change.
The group, which includes opposition parties of various ideologies, including Arab and Kurdish nationalists, Marxists and independent figures such as writer Michel Kilo and economist Aref Dalila, met near the capital on Saturday to discuss how to end the crisis.
Syria has been rocked by protests against Assad that began on March 15 and triggered a brutal crackdown in which the United Nations says 2,600 people have been killed.
Assad Sunday praised Moscow’s “balanced” position on Syria, in talks with a Russian delegation on a mission to help end the government crackdown on protesters.
Assad welcomed the “balanced and constructive Russian position toward the security and stability of Syria,” the state-run SANA news agency reported.
It said Assad denounced “attempts to destabilise Syria through armed terrorist operations, both civilian and military,” and warned against “any foreign intervention that threatens to divide states in the region.”
Assad’s government has blamed the protests on “armed terrorist gangs.”
Russia has continued to support Assad despite the crackdown on protests that the United Nations estimates to have killed around 2,600 people, and has been a bulwark against any Security Council resolution condemning the regime.
Ilyas Umakhanov, deputy head of Russia’s upper house of parliament, the Federation Council, held discussions with Assad that were “open, trust-based and substantial,” Russia’s Interfax news agency said.
“It confirmed that the country’s leadership understands that one can only overcome a political crisis by uniting all the country’s healthy political forces.”
“We once again saw for ourselves that the country’s leadership intends to firmly move along the path of political reforms, create all the necessary conditions to consolidate society and all the patriotic forces of the country,” the Russian senator was quoted as saying.
The Russian delegation also plans to visit the flashpoint town of Daraa and opposition cities of Homs and Hama, according to Interfax.
The opposition, meanwhile, is trying to unite against the regime.
Opponents plan to announce the formation of a coalition that includes the Coordinating Committee, liberal parties of the opposition “Damascus Declaration,” the Muslim Brotherhood and independent Islamists.
Several coalitions or councils have also been set up abroad, under the leadership of exiled opposition figures.
“For the overthrow of the tyrannical and corrupt security regime and for democratic change, the peaceful revolution of the Syrian people must continue,” said a statement read Sunday by Abdel Aziz Khayer of the Coordinating Committee.
To find a way out of the crisis, “we must end the military solution, allow peaceful protests, withdraw the army to the barracks, try those responsible for the massacre of protesters, release all political prisoners and begin reconciliation between the army and the people,” the statement added.
Another committee member, Rajaa Nasser, said that “all movements of the Syrian opposition agree on the need for change. The majority reject any military intervention” in Syria, he added.
Samir Aita, editor of Le Monde Diplomatique in Arabic and European representative of the Coordinating Committee, announced a Sept 23 meeting in the German capital Berlin.
“It is necessary to unify (opposition) efforts for the change to happen,” he said, adding that it was important that the various opposition currents should “unite around common goals.”
The meeting on Saturday elected an 80-member central council, with young members representing more than a quarter of the board.