BREGA, Libya — Rebel forces routed troops loyal to Moammmar Gadhafi in a fierce, topsy-turvy battle over an oil port Wednesday, scrambling over the dunes of a Mediterranean beach through shelling and an airstrike to corner their attackers. The daylong fighting blunted the regime’s first counteroffensive against opposition-held eastern Libya.
At least 10 anti-Gadhafi fighters were killed and 18 wounded in the battle over Brega, Libya’s second largest petroleum facility, which the opposition has held since last week.
Citizen militias flowed in from a nearby city and from the opposition stronghold of Benghazi hours away to reinforce the defence, finally repelling the regime loyalists.
The attack began just after dawn, when several hundred pro-Gadhafi forces in 50 trucks and SUVs mounted with machine-guns descended on the port, driving out a small opposition contingent and seizing control of the oil facilities, port and airstrip. But by afternoon, they had lost it all and had retreated to a university about 7 kilometres away.
There, opposition fighters besieged them, clambering from the beach up a hill to the campus as mortars and heavy machine-gun fire blasted around them, according to an Associated Press reporter at the scene. They took cover behind grassy dunes, firing back with assault rifles, machine-guns and grenade launchers. At one point a warplane struck in the dunes to try to disperse them, but it caused no casualties and the siege continued.
“The dogs have fled,” one middle-aged fighter shouted, waving his Kalashnikov over his head in victory after the Gadhafi forces withdrew from the town before nightfall.
Cars honked their horns and many people fired assault rifles in the air in celebration.
The attack on Brega, 460 miles (740 kilometres) east of Gadhafi’s stronghold in Tripoli, illustrated the deep difficulties the Libyan leader’s armed forces — an array of militiamen, mercenaries and military units — have had in rolling back the uprising that has swept over the entire eastern half of Libya since Feb. 15.
For the past week, pro-Gadhafi forces have been focusing on the west, securing the capital Tripoli and trying to take back nearby rebel-held cities.
But the regime has seemed to struggle to bring an overwhelming force to bear against cities largely defended by local residents using weapons looted from storehouses and backed by allied army units.
Pro-Ga
dhafi forces succeeded over the weekend in retaking two small towns. But the major western rebel-held cities of Zawiya and Misrata, near Tripoli, have both repelled repeated, major attacks — including new forays against Zawiya on Wednesday.
In the capital, Gadhafi vowed, “We will fight until the last man and woman.” He lashed out against Europe and the United States for their pressure on him to step down, warning that thousands of Libyans will die if U.S. and NATO forces intervene in the conflict.
“We will not accept an intervention like that of the Italians that lasted decades,” Gadhafi told a gathering of supporters and journalists, referring to Italy’s colonial rule early in the 20th Century. “We will not accept a similar American intervention. This will lead to a bloody war and thousands of Libyans will die if America and NATO enter Libya.”
In Benghazi, Libya’s second largest city and the stronghold of the rebellion in the east, a self-declared “interim government council” formed by the opposition called on foreign nations to carry out airstrikes on non-Libyan African mercenaries that Gadhafi has used in his militias to put down the uprising.
Council spokesman Abdel-Hafiz Hoga said the council urged airstrikes on the “strongholds of the mercenaries .... used against civilians and people.”
The council was announced Wednesday by opposition leaders, headed by Gadhafi’s former justice minister, Mustafa Abdel-Jalil, who joined the uprising.
The United States is moving naval and air forces closer to Libyan shores and is calling for Gadhafi to give up power immediately. The U.S., Britain and other NATO countries are drawing up contingency plans to impose a no-fly zone over Libya to prevent Gadhafi’s air forces from striking rebels.
But the idea has been rejected by Russia, which holds a veto-wielding seat on the U.N. Security Council.
Pro-Gadhafi militiamen launched a wave of raids in Tripoli on Wednesday to snatch people who participated in anti-government protests over the past week after identifying them in photos and video, several witnesses said.
Dozens were arrested from their homes in dawn raids in the restive neighbourhood of Tajoura, said one resident, whose two brothers were among those taken.
“Seventeen cars with armed militia in uniform, they stormed the houses of my brothers. They blew the locks off the doors, they took the jewelry of my sister-in-law, money and my brothers,” the resident said, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation. “My sister-in-law is pregnant in her sixth month, now she is at the hospital after bleeding.”
The attack on Brega was the first major offensive by Gadhafi forces against the long swath of eastern Libya that is in opposition hands, extending from the oil port all the way to the Egyptian border, nearly half the country’s 1,000-mile (1,600-kilometre) Mediterranean coast.
Opposition members said they believe the regime pulled up reinforcements from Sebha — a key Gadhafi stronghold deep in the country’s southwestern deserts — flying them to Sirte, his main remaining bastion in central Libya, to carry out the attack.
The force struck around 6 a.m., catching the small opposition contingent in Brega by surprise and forcing them to flee, said Ahmed Dawas, an anti-Gadhafi fighter at a checkpoint outside the port.
The Gadhafi fighters seized the port, airstrip and the oil facilities where about 4,000 personnel work, as regime warplanes hit an ammunition depot on the outskirts of the nearby rebel-held city of Ajdabiya, witnesses said.
Midmorning, the opposition counterattacked. Anti-Gadhafi fighters with automatic weapons sped out of Ajdabiya in pickup trucks, heading for Brega, 40 miles away (70 kilometres) away.
Dawas said they retook the oil facilities and airstrip. Other witnesses reported regime forces were surrounded by rebels. The sound of screaming warplanes and the crackle of heavy gunfire could be heard as the witnesses spoke to The Associated Press by phone. Several of the pro-Gadhafi force’s machine-gun-mounted pickup trucks were seen on fire on roadsides in the town.
In the late afternoon, the pro-Gadhafi force fled the campus, and opposition fighters were seen combing through the university buildings.
Brega is the second-largest hydrocarbon complex in OPEC-member Libya. Amid the turmoil, exports from its ports have all but stopped with no ships coming to load up with crude and natural gas.
The unrest in Libya — which ranks about 17th among world oil producers and has Africa’s largest proven oil reserves — has sparked a major spike in world oil prices. Overall crude production has dropped from 1.6 million barrels per day to 850,000.
The turmoil has also sparked a massive exodus of 180,000 people — mostly foreign workers in Libya — who have fled to the borders, U.N. refugee agency spokeswoman Melissa Fleming told The Associated Press. European nations and Egypt launched emergency airlifts and sent ships to handle the chaotic flight.
In his speech Wednesday, Gadhafi lashed out at international moves against his regime, including the freezing of his and other Libyan assets abroad and efforts by Europe to send aid to opposition-held Benghazi.
In a pointed message to Europe, he warned, “There will be no stability in the Mediterranean if there is no stability in Libya.”
“Africans will march to Europe without anyone to stop them. The Mediterranean will become a centre for piracy like Somalia,” he said. Gadhafi’s regime has worked closely with Italy and other European countries to stop African migrants who use Libya as a launching point to slip into Europe.
Gadhafi also repeated his claims that al-Qaida is behind the uprising.
As he spoke, opposition protesters rallied in Benghazi, many of them holding signs saying, “Newsbreak: Gadhafi lies.”