Libyan forces plan “final” attack on Gaddafi hometown (Reuters)

SIRTE, Libya (Reuters) – Libyan interim government forces prepared on Tuesday for a final attack on Muammar Gaddafi’s hometown and one of his former lieutenants said he believed the deposed leader was still in the country and would fight on till the end.

“I think Gaddafi … has not left the country. I strongly believe, based on my knowledge of him, that he is fighting with his weapons and alongside his men,” Gaddafi’s former Prime Minister Al-Baghdadi Ali al-Mahmoudi, who is in prison in Tunisia, said in comments passed to Reuters by his lawyer.

“He will not give up and he will not lay down his weapons until the end,” Mahmoudi said.

Gaddafi and several of his sons are still at large seven weeks after rebel fighters stormed the capital and ended his 42-year rule. His supporters hold Sirte and the town of Bani Walid, south of Tripoli.

Government forces who had for three weeks been pinned down by artillery and rocket fire on the eastern edges of Sirte were able to advance several kilometers (miles) into the city on Monday, capturing the southern district of Bouhadi.

Bullet-holed cars carrying terrified, ill and hungry civilians crawled out of Sirte, one of the last pro-Gaddafi bastions. Aid agencies say they are concerned about civilians inside Gaddafi’s hometown who are trapped by the fighting and running out of food, water, fuel and medicine.

Commanders of forces loyal to the ruling National Transitional Council (NTC) are talking of a “final” push to take the town. Backed by NATO warplanes, they have been bombarding pro-Gaddafi positions inside Sirte.

Gaddafi’s former prime minister, who is in prison while the authorities in neighboring Tunisia consider a request from the NTC for his extradition, said he would be ready to cooperate with Libya’s new rulers if they dropped that request.

“I am ready to cooperate with the transitional council but on condition that they drop all requests for extradition and the negative campaigns against me,” he said. “I hope to be a part of the solution in Libya and not part of the problem.”

Concerns about the humanitarian crisis in Sirte have focused on the Ibn Sina hospital. Medical workers who fled Sirte said patients were dying on the operating table because there was no oxygen and no fuel for the hospital’s generators.

“It’s a disaster,” a doctor who gave her name as Nada told Reuters as she fled the city on Tuesday. “They are hitting the hospital. Two kids have died there. There is random shooting at the hospital from both sides.”

On the east of the city on Tuesday, NTC fighters said they were trying to clear a corridor to the hospital but that they were being hampered by pro-Gaddafi snipers.

Gaddafi’s former prime minister, who is not on the list of former Libyan officials wanted by the International Criminal Court, distanced himself from the repression of the old regime.

“I tell one thing: I was hated by Gaddafi’s entourage,” al-Mahmoudi said. “I am convinced that I have done nothing bad to the Libyans,” he said. “My role was to ensure food supplies for the Libyan people, particularly during the crisis.”

“The French know very well that this was the role I played … I had no military role.”

“MY FATHER DIED IN MY ARMS”

Gaddafi’s spokesman, and some civilians leaving Sirte, have blamed NATO bombing and NTC shelling for killing civilians and destroying buildings in the town.

NATO and the NTC say pro-Gaddafi forces have been executing those they believe to be NTC sympathizers and forcing others to fight.

A Red Cross convoy delivered oxygen and other urgently needed medical supplies to the hospital on Monday after an earlier attempt was aborted because of heavy fighting.

“The situation on the ground was very tense with ongoing fighting,” Red Cross delegate Hichem Khadraoui said.

“Under such conditions, we had to limit ourselves – after obtaining clearances from all the parties concerned – to bringing in the most urgently needed humanitarian aid.”

Civilians driving out of the town on Tuesday looked in poorer condition than people had in previous days, Reuters journalists on the east and west of Sirte said.

Several people said they were ill and one man showed string holding up his trousers because he had so little to eat in the last three weeks.

Ali Durgham, leaving the city with several relatives, told Reuters his father had been killed and his uncle gravely wounded by a shell as they walked to a mosque on Monday.

“My father died in my arms,” he said, weeping. “I buried him yesterday.”

Medical staff outside Sirte who had treated wounded civilians fleeing the fighting said they had been told the corridors of Ibn Sina were full of patients and that only pro-Gaddafi fighters or members of his tribe were being treated.

A military spokesman for the interim government told a television channel that Gaddafi’s son Mutassim was hiding in the hospital.

“Our revolutionaries (in Sirte) are fighting those who are accomplices of the tyrant in crimes against the Libyan people,” Ahmed Bani told Doha-based Libya TV.

“They are a group of killers and mercenaries led by Mutassim Gaddafi who is now in the Ibn Sina hospital in Sirte to avoid being hit, according to newly received information.”

The NTC said on Monday it would set in motion the process of democratic elections once Sirte is captured, instead of waiting until the whole country is “liberated.” This marked a shift from the previous position that elections would not be held until all pro-Gaddafi resistance was stamped out.

A city of about 75,000 people, Sirte holds symbolic importance. Gaddafi transformed his birthplace from a sleepy fishing town into Libya’s second capital.

(Additional reporting by Emad Omar in Benghazi, Jessica Donati, William Maclean and Joseph Logan in Tripoli; Writing by Joseph Nasr; Editing by Andrew Roche)

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