Libya: rebels regroup after retreating from Gaddafi forces

Libyan rebels in the east are preparing for a fresh counter-attack against Gaddafi’s forces after being pushed back to the east of the port of Brega.

Despite almost two weeks of western air strikes, Gaddafi’s troops have used superior arms and tactics in the past few days to reverse rebel advances.

Our International Editor Lindsey Hilsum reports from Benghazi that in the last few days Gaddafi’s forces have begun travelling in pick-up trucks with guns mounted on the back, making them much harder for coalition aircraft to distinguish from rebel troops. With the pro-Gaddafi forces also apparently now more adept at using cover to hide their firepower on the ground, and many of the ‘easier’ targets – such as fixed installations – already disabled, the situation is becoming increasingly challenging for the Nato operation.

On Thursday NATO said it had assumed full control of all air operations over Libya, and – despite being pushed back on the battlefield – rebels expressed optimism about the future in the light of Gaddafi’s Foreign Minister’s defection and the news that President Obama may have authorised covert operations in Libya

“We are beginning to see the Gaddafi regime crumble,” rebel spokesman Mustafa Gheriani said in the eastern town of Benghazi.

But the rebels are stopping short of embracing the fugitive Foreign Minister Moussa Koussa, a former spy chief, as one of their own.

Read more: Libya’s rebel movement: radicals or democrats?

The U.S. says coalition strikes have seriously degraded Gaddafi’s fighting power but the Libyan leader is not close to a military breaking point.

“We have actually fairly seriously degraded his military capabilities…we’ve attrited his overall forces at about the 20 to 25 per cent level,” Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, told lawmakers.

“That does not mean he’s about to break from a military standpoint, because that’s not the case.”

Civilian casualties

There have been more reports of civilian casualties caused by both Gaddafi’s forces and the western coalition.

Libyan officials have previously taken foreign reporters to the sites of what they say were the aftermath of western air strikes on Tripoli but evidence of civilian casualties has been inconclusive. But on Thursday the top Vatican official in the Libyan capital told a Catholic news agency that at least 40 civilians have been killed in air strikes by western forces on Tripoli.

“The so-called humanitarian raids have killed dozens of civilian victims in some neighbourhoods of Tripoli,” said Giovanni Innocenzo Martinelli, the Apostolic Vicar of Tripoli.

“I have collected several witness accounts from reliable people. In particular, in the Buslim neighbourhood, due to the bombardments, a civilian building collapsed, causing the death of 40 people,” he told Fides, the news agency of the Vatican missionary arm.

“It’s true that the bombardments seem pretty much on target, but it is also true that when they hit military targets, which are in the middle of civilian neighbourhoods, the population is also involved,” Martinelli said.

In response, NATO said it was investigating the reports of civilian casualties in Tripoli, but could not confirm them.

Elsewhere in Libya there are reports that pro-Gaddafi forces have again been shelling the rebel-held city of Misrata. A rebel spokesman said that 20 civilians were killed in bombardments on Wednesday:

“Artillery bombardment resumed this morning and is still going on. The (pro-Gaddafi) brigades could not enter the town but they are surrounding it,” the spokesman said.

“Twenty civilians were killed yesterday after their houses were hit by bombardments. Many people were wounded. Massacres are taking place in Misrata.”