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AUGUST 30, 2011

As Gadhafi Kin Flee, Rebels Try to Secure Oil

Leader's Wife, Three Children Left Libya, Algerians Say; Amid Lull in Battles Near Sirte, Fighters Turn Up Arms Cache

By SAM DAGHER

BREGA, Libya--The wife of Libya's Col. Moammar Gadhafi crossed the Libyan border into Algeria with three of their children Monday, Algerian authorities said, while a military standoff continued near Col. Gadhafi's tribal home base of Sirte.

Col. Gadhafi's wife, Safia; her daughter Aisha; and his sons Hannibal and Mohammed entered Algeria early Monday, the Algerian Foreign Ministry said in a short statement. The statement, which didn't mention the whereabouts of Col. Gadhafi, underscored the degree to which the leader of more than four decades has lost his grip on power.

Rebels said fighting had died down Monday to the east and west of Sirte, the seat of Col. Gadhafi's tribe, which lies on Libya's coast between Tripoli and Benghazi. But recent heavy fighting between rebel forces and Gadhafi loyalists in the area has led to speculation that the embattled leader may be making a last stand there.

Rebels have also told media outlets they believe Col. Gadhafi's son Khamis and intelligence chief Abdullah al-Senussi were killed in fighting nearby over the weekend. The reports weren't possible to confirm.

Libyan rebels moved to consolidate their control over some of the country's most vital oil and gas infrastructure in the Gulf of Sidra, near Sirte. Rebels began cleaning up and preparing to resume operations after nearly six months of heavy fighting and multiple advances and retreats along this strategic coastal strip.

In an apparent indication of Col. Gadhafi's determination to cling to these energy complexes and evade airstrikes by North Atlantic Treaty Organization planes, he turned refineries, petrochemical plants and other installations along this coast into barracks and weapons warehouses, rebels have discovered over the past week.

The most dramatic revelation for technicians and rebel fighters stationed at Sirte Oil Co. in the town of Brega have been the hundreds of wooden cases that bore East European, North Korean and Russian rockets and shells of all calibers and types stocked inside a methanol plant covering nearly one square mile.

The cache was everywhere under high-pressure pipes, inside condenser chambers and even next to signs reading "Think safety. Ask if in doubt." Mattresses, food remains and pro-Gadhafi graffiti were indication that regime soldiers had been stationed inside the plant.

On Monday, the rebels' governing body, the National Transitional Council, signed a memorandum of understanding with Italy's Eni SpA to pave the way for the energy giant to restart its operations in Libya. The NTC repeated calls over the weekend for workers in the oil and gas sector to return to their jobs in Brega, Ras Lanuf and Sidra.

But the need to remove ordnance and other vestiges of war from the area underscore the daunting challenges that remain.

Inside Sirte Oil's sprawling seafront compound in Brega, one of four crude-oil storage tanks hit in fighting earlier this month continues to spew smoke and flames. The cooling system has been activated. Technicians say the oil will just have to burn out on its own.NATO airstrikes turned administrative offices, a club and dining room, used as a command center by Col. Gadhafi's forces at the site, into rubble.

Otherwise, most of the company's key facilities seemed to be intact. Petrochemical and fertilizer plants appeared undamaged, as did compressor stations and pipes supplying natural gas to power plants and major factories in the western half of the country, including the capital Tripoli, now under rebel control.

"We still have to conduct a thorough inspection," said Muftah Saad al-Haddad, a technical director at the company, during a tour of the site with other engineers Monday.

These people pointed to crates of weapons, some still filled with their lethal loads. Strewn on the floor were a few Grad rockets of the sort used against rebel-controlled areas. "This is a crime against us and our children," said Abdullah Mohammed, director of human resources at one of the company's subsidiaries.

Away from Brega's industrial sector, several housing compounds that were home to Libyan and expatriate oil and gas workers are now virtual ghost towns. Some homes were badly damaged by the fighting and ransacked. Others have this warning scrawled on the outside by patrolling rebel fighters: "The home is booby-trapped."

Bou-Shuwal Abdel-Rahim, a security guard at Sirte Oil, was one of the few people venturing back to Brega on Monday after fleeing with his wife and four children eastward to the relative safety of Benghazi in mid-March.

"We feel good this time. There will be no comeback for the [Gadhafi] brigades. The rebels are in control," said his wife, Fajra, squeezed with the rest of the family in a pickup truck with carpets, mattresses, a television set and a satellite dish.

The mood was more cautious in villages farther west toward Ras Lanuf, home to a major refinery, that have been in the crossfire for months.

Only five of some 300 families remain in the village of Al-Ugaila, which lacks electricity, fuel and adequate food supplies.

"We are smacked by people coming from this way and that way," said a resident of the town of Bisher.

Rebels have full control of the refinery and other oil installations at Ras Lanuf as well as the residential area nearby and have pushed up the coast to an area called Nawfaliya, about 60 miles east of Col. Gadhafi's hometown of Sirte.

But they may still face a formidable fight in the coming days and weeks. Pro-Gadhafi forces have amassed in Sirte and several staunchly tribal areas in the interior and south including Bani Walid, Jufra, Mizdah and Sebha.

The Gadhafi loyalists' rockets were still a menace for rebels, with at least one Grad rocket exploding Monday night inside Ras Lanuf. It wasn't immediately clear if there were casualties or damage.

The fleeing Gadhafi family members included Mohammed, the only child born to Col. Gadhafi's first wife, who ran the state telecommunications company, a position that is said to have helped the regime monitor phone calls. Hannibal helped manage Libya's state shipping company, while Aisha was, until the uprising, a U.N. goodwill ambassador to Libya. The latter two are children of Col. Gadhafi and Safia.

The Algerian Foreign Ministry said in its short statement Monday that United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and Mahmoud Jibril, chairman of the executive board of Libya's National Transitional Council--the main opposition force to Col. Gadhafi--had been informed about the arrival of the Gadhafi relatives.

Algeria, which shares a 500-mile border with Libya, hasn't recognized the rebel-led NTC, leading to growing criticism by some Libyan rebels that Algiers is siding with Col. Gadhafi.

Algeria's Foreign Minister Mourad Medelci has repeatedly stated that his country wished to observe "strict neutrality" in the war between Libyan rebels led by the NTC and forces loyal to Col. Gadhafi.

--David Gauthier-Villars contributed to this article.

Write to Sam Dagher at sam.dagher@wsj.com