TRIPOLI—Libya’s rebels were on Tuesday seeking the return from Algeria of Moammar Gadhafi’s wife and three children while stepping up the hunt for the strongman himself, as NATO bombed his hometown Sirte.
“We’d like those persons to come back,” rebels’ spokesman Mahmud Shammam said after Algiers on Monday announced that Gadhafi’s wife Safiya, two sons, a daughter and their children, had crossed the border into the country.
So far Algeria has not recognized the NTC and has adopted a stance of strict neutrality on the Libyan conflict, leading some among the rebels to accuse it of supporting the Gadhafi regime.
“The wife of Moammar Gadhafi, Safiya, his daughter Aisha, and sons Hannibal and Mohammed, accompanied by their children, entered Algeria at 8:45 a.m. (0745 GMT) through the Algeria-Libyan border,” the Algerian foreign ministry said in a statement carried by the state APS news agency, giving no information on the whereabouts of Gadhafi himself.
The ministry said that UN chief Ban Ki-moon, the Security Council and number two leader of the rebels’ National Transitional Council (NTC), Mahmud Jibril, had been informed.
Responding, spokesman Shammam said Algeria had given Gadhafi’s family members “a pass” to enter a third country.
“Saving Gadhafi’s family is not an act we welcome and understand,” he told a press conference in Tripoli late on Monday.
“We can assure our neighbors that we want better relations with them … but we are determined to arrest and try the Gadhafi family and Gadhafi himself,” Shammam went on, saying the rebels guaranteed a “fair trial.”
Italian news agency ANSA, citing “authoritative Libyan diplomatic sources,” said Gadhafi and his sons Saadi and Seif al-Islam were holed-up in the town of Bani Walid, south of the capital Tripoli.
Rebel Libyan justice minister Mohammed al-Allagy told AFP that Gadhafi’s youngest son Khamis, whose death has been announced several times since Libya’s conflict erupted but never confirmed, may have been killed south of Tripoli and buried on Monday.
Khamis, 28, commanded a brigade seen as the most effective and loyal force of the Libyan leader.
NATO said on Tuesday its warplanes have fired a new barrage of bombs against Gadhafi forces holed up in Sirte, the regime’s last stronghold.
The Western alliance said it destroyed 22 vehicles mounted with weapons, four radars, three command and control nodes, one anti-aircraft missile system and one surface-to-air missile system in the town’s vicinity on Monday.
NATO also struck two military supply vehicles, one command post and one military facility.
Sirte has been a regular NATO target since the air war began in March but the alliance appears to have stepped up its strikes there while rebels advance on the town, 360 kilometers (225 miles) east of Tripoli.
With Gadhafi’s whereabouts still a mystery, there has been speculation that he is hiding out among tribal supporters in his birthplace.
Rebels say they are negotiating with civic and tribal leaders to try to broker Sirte’s peaceful surrender.
NTC chief Mustafa Abdel Jalil had on Monday urged the international coalition to continue its action against the strongman.
“Gadhafi’s defiance of the coalition forces still poses a danger, not only for Libya but for the world. That is why we are calling for the coalition to continue its support,” Abdel Jalil said at a meeting in Doha of chiefs of staff of countries taking part in military action in Libya.
The international coalition began Operation Unified Protector on March 19 under a UN mandate which authorized air strikes to protect civilians.
Since March 31, the air strikes have been carried out under NATO command.
Coalition military chiefs said in a joint statement that the war in Libya “is yet to end” and that “there is a need to continue the joint action until the Libyan people achieve their goal by eliminating the remnants of Gadhafi.”
The White House said it did not know Gadhafi’s whereabouts but had no indication he had left Libya.
Rebel reinforcements were arriving on Tuesday at Bin Jawad, 100 kilometers (60 miles) east of Sirte, an AFP reporter said.
Occasional explosions could be heard from near Nofilia, a desert hamlet just inland from Bin Jawad, while rebel T-55 tanks and armored vehicles rumbled towards the front line, taking up positions in the sand dunes.
Nofilia was seized by the rebels on Monday, sparking celebrations among the rebels.
“Tomorrow (Tuesday), God willing, we will continue our advance. Their morale is rock bottom,” a rebel commander said of Gadhafi loyalists.
Senior officials from around 60 countries meanwhile will meet in Paris on Thursday as the “friends of Libya” to secure financial and diplomatic support for the fledgling revolutionary regime.
President Nicolas Sarkozy of France and Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain will jointly host the event, welcoming leaders of the NTC into the international fold.
Dozens more leaders and foreign ministers will take part in an event at once symbolic and practical: it marks a rebirth after 42 years of Gadhafi’s misrule, but also a chance to urge the unfreezing of Libyan assets.