Gadhafi forces advance on rebel-held oil port

RAS LANUF, Libya—Forces loyal to strongman Moammar Gadhafi advanced on the rebel-held oil port of Ras Lanuf on Monday in a counterattack that forced residents to flee and rebels to hide their weapons in the desert.

The Libyan Army was moving east down the strategic Mediterranean coastal road from the recaptured town of Bin Jawad, heading toward Ras Lanuf which is about 60 kilometer away and which has a major oil complex, witnesses told Reuters.

A Reuters correspondent saw Gadhafi’s forces about 5 km east of Bin Jawad on Sunday evening, suggesting the Libyan leader’s troops were making slow but steady progress.

“I went to Bin Jawad and about 20 km beforehand I saw Gadhafi forces, a large truck and army vehicles, and a fighter jet, they were coming slowly in this direction,” Ahmed al-Araibi, a driver, told Reuters.

“I saw Army trucks ahead, I was about 20 km away (from Bin Jawad),” said Khalifa Saad, another driver. Another witness said there were several trucks heading to Ras Lanuf.

A Libyan warplane screeched over the rebels in Ras Lanuf, sending them into a frenzy of firing at it, shouting: “Allahu Akbar! (God is great).”

Looking on, one resident said: “I believe these youths are ready to die, but they won’t make a difference. Look at the way they’re firing at the plane. They have no experience.”

Another resident told rebels to go home and not bring the fighting close to the oil terminals. A Reuters witness saw no more than 200 or so rebels in Ras Lanuf, but it was not clear how many more were in the immediate surrounding area.

Stopped at Sirte

The taking of Ras Lanuf had represented a major victory for the rebels on Friday, but their advance toward Gadhafi’s hometown of Sirte on the road to Tripoli was stopped in its tracks at Bin Jawad where rebels retreated under withering fire.

The rebels had punched through government forces in the oil producing towns of Brega and Ras Lanuf, then Bin Jawad and al-Nawfaliyeh on their way west to Sirte, a Gadhafi stronghold, when they made the mistake of leaving Bin Jawad undefended.

Government forces had slipped into the town at night and lain in wait for the rebels, who on Sunday were ambushed and could not regain the territory despite hours of fighting.

Visibly agitated

It was still unclear whether rebels still held al-Nawfaliyah.

Reporters evacuated Ras Lanuf’s main hotel before dawn on Monday after the staff warned they could not guarantee their safety. The journalists came across only a small number of visibly agitated rebels at two checkpoints en route out of the oil port to the east.

Some reporters returned, but the hotel staff had not. A rebel soldier with a rifle on his shoulder served coffee to guests.

“We heard our positions would be bombed, so we took our weapons away,” one rebel told Reuters on the dusty, windswept highway. Another said: “We took them out into the desert.”

A third rebel said the insurgents were redeploying into the desert to prepare for an attempt to wrest back Bin Jawad.

The night before, rebel commanders had been seen seated in the Ras Lanuf hotel lobby with a big sheet of paper on which red arrows were pointing in various directions, planning a military operation of some kind.

Out of harm’s way

But rebels at the checkpoints were nervous rather than confident as before, saying families were fleeing Ras Lanuf and Bin Jawad to get out of harm’s way.

“We are leaving simply because it will be safer,” said the head of one family in a car stuffed with household belongings.

Some rebels accused Gadhafi’s forces of using the local population of Bin Jawad as human shields in the fighting.

The rebels’ retreat from Bin Jawad was sudden.

Hundreds of the loosely organized rebels tore back at high speed in pickup trucks and other vehicles to Ras Lanuf to regroup, with many saying they feared an Army advance but some wanting to return immediately to the front line.

“Many of the rebels are young, and they’re just not used to war. That’s why they ran back,” Ibrahim Zwei, a rebel, told Reuters.

Lack of experience

The revolutionary fervor that had carried the Libyan rebels to three straight victories over government forces as they moved west was in short supply on Monday, after the surprise ambush highlighted their painful lack of experience.

A Reuters correspondent talked to the rebels to gauge their mood on Monday.

The rebels said they had been relying on the residents of government-held towns to rise up and join them. But this is likely to become harder as the rebels move west into more affluent areas that have benefited from Gadhafi’s rule.

Many fighters, mostly youths in jeans and sneakers, said they were betrayed by the people of Bin Jawad.

“We got calls from the people of Bin Jawad telling us to come through and that all was well. Then we were ambushed,” Hani Zwei said. “I can’t believe our own countrymen would do that.”

So far, the rebels had been careful to accuse mostly foreign mercenaries of fighting for Gadhafi. The rebels had been keen to highlight national unity and support for their cause.

The oil port of Ras Lanuf has manicured gardens and handsome buildings, but the town is now littered with rubbish and covered in graffiti from the rebels.

UN appeal

Some rebels have looted nearby oil firms and now drive around in stolen trucks. Oil workers looked on balefully, saying nothing to reporters.

Amid the bloodiest fighting of the three-week-old conflict, the United Nations demanded urgent access to scores of “injured and dying” in the western city of Misrata.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said Gadhafi’s foreign minister had agreed to let a “humanitarian assessment” team visit Tripoli.

Ban named former Jordanian Foreign Minister Abdulilah al-Khatib as special envoy to deal with the regime. Khatib was to undertake “urgent consultations” with the Tripoli government.

The situation in Misrata, Libya’s third city controlled by rebels, prompted a dramatic appeal from the UN’s emergency relief coordinator Valerie Amos, after Gadhafi tanks shelled the city center on Sunday.

“Humanitarian organizations need urgent access now. People are injured and dying and need help immediately,” Amos said in a statement late Sunday.

“I call on the authorities to provide access without delay to allow aid workers to help save lives,” he added.

Residents of Misrata, strategically located between the capital Tripoli and Sirte—both key Gadhafi strongholds—had warned of “carnage” if the international community did not intervene.

Intervention by West

With the military situation worsening and population centers threatened, key figures in US politics argued strongly for a US operation to arm the rebels and secure a no-fly zone over Libya to thwart Gadhafi’s Air Force.

Former US Ambassador to the United Nations Bill Richardson said it was time to “covertly arm the rebels” and enforce a no-fly zone over Libya.

US Sen. John Kerry, the chair of the Senate foreign relations committee and a leading member of US President Barack Obama’s Democratic Party, said he assumed “a lot of weapons are going to find their way there from one means or another over the course of the next weeks.”

Stephen Hadley, a national security adviser to Obama’s predecessor George W. Bush, said Washington should look at the potential for funneling arms to Gadhafi’s opponents.

“Obviously, if there is a way to get weapons into the hands of the rebels, if we can get antiaircraft systems so that they can enforce a no-fly zone over their own territory, that would be helpful,” Hadley told CNN.

Gadhafi has not hesitated to use his air power against rebel positions, and reports that his jets bombed protesters in Benghazi in the early days of the revolt are among the atrocities being investigated by war crimes prosecutors from the International Criminal Court.

Former Czech President and communist-era dissident Vaclav Havel added his voice on Monday, saying military action on Libya by Western countries would be necessary if the armed conflict verging on civil war there dragged on.

“Especially if it drags on and if Gadhafi keeps boarding himself up and committing further crimes, some action will be necessary,” Havel told the business daily Hospodarske Noviny in an interview.

US military options

The New York Times reported late Sunday that US defense planners were preparing a range of land, sea and air military options in Libya in case Washington and its allies decided to intervene.

Citing unnamed administration officials, the newspaper said just simple use of signal-jamming aircraft in international airspace could muddle Libyan government communications with military units.

According to the report, another tactic would be to air-drop weapons and supplies to Libyan rebels. Reports from Reuters and AFP