NATO airstrikes aid rebels in Ajdabiya

AJDABIYA, Libya (AP):

Libyan rebels said NATO airstrikes yesterday helped them drive Moammar Gadhafi's forces out of a hard-fought eastern city that is the gateway to the opposition's stronghold.

Four airstrikes largely stopped what had been heavy shelling of Ajdabiya by government forces, rebel battlefield commander and spokesman Col. Hamid Hassy said. NATO's leader of the operation said the airstrikes destroyed 11 tanks near Ajdabiya and another 14 near Misrata, the only city rebels still hold in the western half of Libya.

Hassy said Gadhafi's forces fled the western gate of Ajdabiya and by mid-afternoon had been pushed back about 40 miles (60 kilometres) west of the city. However, sporadic shelling could still be heard around western Ajdabiya.

Mohammed Idris, the supervisor of the hospital in Ajdabiya, said 38 people died in the fighting over the weekend, including 20 Gadhafi fighters and three rebels killed yesterday.

The main front line in Libya's uprising runs along a highway on the country's northern Mediterranean coast that leads out of the rebels' de facto capital of Benghazi in the opposition-held eastern half of the country and toward the regime's western stronghold in the capital Tripoli.

Government forces are trying to regain territory lost to the opposition, which wants to topple Gadhafi after more than four decades in power. The Gadhafi loyalists have been pounding Ajdabiya in their most sustained offensive since being driven back west by international airstrikes last month.

If Gadhafi's forces took the city, they would have a clear path to Benghazi, Libya's second largest city about 100 miles (160 kilometres) away along the coast.

"If he controls Adjabiya, he makes us feel like we are unsafe because he can move anywhere in the east," Hassy said.