Rebels launch push in west

BIR AYAD (AP):

Rebels launched a new offensive out of their stronghold in Libya's western mountains, battling regime forces on a new front in a bid to break a months-long deadlock and push toward Tripoli, the heartland of Moammar Gadhafi's rule on the Mediterranean coast.

Booms of shelling and rocket fire echoed from the front lines on Saturday, centred around the town of Bir Ghanam, where the rebel force backed by tanks fought Gadhafi's troops much of the day. Later, witnesses saw flattened buildings presumably targeted in NATO airstrikes and three smoldering government tanks in the town.

Frustrated with stalemate

Rebels are hoping for a breakthrough in the far west of Libya, frustrated with the stalemate in the centre of the country, where their underequipped forces have been unable to budge the battlelines despite five months of NATO airstrikes on Gadhafi's military. Rebels control most of the eastern half of country, while Gadhafi's regime holds most of the west, centred around Tripoli, the country's capital.

At dawn, thousands of opposition fighters pushed out of the Nafusa Mountains, a range near the Tunisian border, into the coastal plain towards their main objectives, Zawiya and Sabratha, two key regime-held towns on the Mediterranean west of the capital. Bir Ghanam, one of their initial targets Saturday, lies a little more than a third of the 50-mile (80-kilometre) distance to Zawiya.

Rebel commander Colonel Jumma Ibrahim said opposition forces captured Bir Ghanam and had moved a few miles beyond it, as well as making advances on a separate highway to Sabratha. On that highway, rebels at one point came to within 18 miles (30 kilometres) of Libya's coastline, but their convoy then came under heavy fire and they retreated, witnesses said.

"Now he can only defend himself against us," Ibrahim said of Gadhafi. "Our main destination is Tripoli, but we cannot jump directly to Tripoli. We go one by one."