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SEPTEMBER 17, 2011

Gadhafi Loyalists Prolong Endgame

By YAROSLAV TROFIMOV

BANI WALID, Libya--Libya's revolutionaries struck Col. Moammar Gadhafi's remaining strongholds on Friday, aiming to consolidate their control ahead of a meeting of the interim governing council to chart a democratic transition.

Advancing units, however, encountered fierce resistance in Bani Walid, a crossroads city two hours southeast of Tripoli, and in the deposed dictator's coastal hometown of Sirte. Sustaining dozens of casualties, the anti-Gadhafi forces retreated Friday night to the desert outside Bani Walid.

The latest round of fighting erupted after more than a week of attempts by the new interim administration to negotiate a peaceful surrender of the loyalist areas, which also include the southern city of Sebha and large parts of Libya's southern deserts bordering on Algeria, Niger and Chad.

The push came as the National Transitional Council, Libya's interim governing authority, prepared to convene on Sunday its first meeting since Col. Gadhafi's ouster from the capital last month.

The NTC is expected to discuss reshuffling the interim government, possibly giving more representation to western Libyan areas that have only recently shaken off Col. Gadhafi's rule, its members say.

Some of these members also want the NTC to formally proclaim at the meeting that Libya has been liberated, though pockets remain under loyalist control. Such a declaration, so far opposed as premature by the NTC's chairman, Mustafa Abdul Jalil, would kick off the countdown to elections and a transition to democracy.

Amin Belhaj, an influential NTC member from Tripoli and a representative of the Muslim Brotherhood, argued that this transition should start immediately. "If we delay this declaration of liberation, we delay the start of building the new Libya," he said in an interview.

The United Nations General Assembly strengthened such arguments on Friday by formally awarding Libya's U.N. membership to the NTC.

Further bolstering the country's new rulers, the U.N. Security Council passed a resolution unfreezing assets of two Libyan oil companies and several financial institutions, including the country's central bank and the Libyan Arab Foreign Bank. It also lifted restrictions on Libyan commercial air travel and specified ways other funds could be unfrozen.

The remaining strength of former-regime loyalists, however, was evident in Bani Walid, a historic hub of Libya's biggest tribe, the Warfalla. On Friday morning, NTC-allied fighters from Tripoli and the Western Mountains penetrated the city from the north, advancing through the marketplace to its center.

By 11 a.m., however, a fierce loyalist counterattack began, first with sniper fire and then with barrages of mortars and Grad rockets.

"We got inside the city but couldn't control it. They are pushing us back, firing everything they've got at us," said the revolutionaries' frontline commander, Ismail al Qitani, as he pointed to enemy positions some 200 yards away, amid billowing black smoke behind the sand-colored wall of a school compound.

As he spoke, a shell slammed into the asphalt in front of him, sending sparks into the air but failing to explode. Seconds later, bullets started whizzing by, prompting Mr. Qitani and his fighters to scurry for cover.

Then, several revolutionary pickup trucks, painted with Libya's new tricolor flag, sped out of a side street, some carrying injured fighters, with the drivers screaming "Ambulance, ambulance" as the gunners unloaded volleys from mounted antiaircraft guns.

A fleet of ambulances had earlier come under loyalist shelling, and pulled back to a mosque several miles away. In an improvised clinic that also doubled as a detention facility across the road from the mosque, the fighters and medics erupted in shouts of "Allahu Akbar" whenever one of the revolutionaries died of his wounds.

The prisoners captured on Friday, the fighters said, included a bodyguard of Col. Gadhafi's son and presumed successor, Seif al-Islam Gadhafi. "We're 100% sure that Seif al-Islam himself is inside Bani Walid," shouted one of the fighters.

The NTC-allied forces have so far rarely had success in seizing towns where genuine support for Col. Gadhafi runs high, relying instead on uprisings from within--such as the one that permitted the rapid capture of Tripoli last month.

Bani Walid has proved particularly tough because many of its clans have been showered by Col. Gadhafi's largess. The Warfalla tribe, in particular, had provided a large part of the former regime's security apparatus.

"There are many loyalists of Gadhafi in Bani Walid, and their hands are covered in blood. This is the last place for them to fight," said Salem Fitouri, a 42-year-old M.B.A. student from Bani Walid who waited by the mosque for the battle's outcome.

Another resident, 27-year-old laborer Najji Youssef, took the opportunity to flee once NTC-allied units entered his neighborhood on the northern outskirts. He said the town was crawling with loyalist forces from all over Libya. "There are hardly any civilians left," he said.

Those civilians that remain may be in for harsh treatment at the hands of the revolutionaries should Bani Walid fall. A bearded revolutionary militant, shooting his Kalashnikov assault rifle over the heads and into the ground near the feet of local civilians who milled near the roadside mosque, screamed, "Get out of here, get out of here. You are the ones who sold us out today."

By late afternoon, as the loyalist mortar and artillery fire became more precise, the pro-NTC fighters abandoned their positions and fled into the desert outside. On Saturday, they said, they would try again to seize Bani Walid.

--Christopher Rhoads at the U.N. contributed to this article.