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Little Resistance as Rebels Enter Tripoli
Rebels surged into the Libyan capital Sunday night, meeting little resistance from troops loyal to Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi and setting off raucous street celebrations by residents hailing the end of his 42 years in power.
The rebel leadership announced that insurgents had captured Seif al-Islam, Colonel Qaddafi’s son and heir apparent. While that claim could not be confirmed, the rebels raced through part of the capital city with apparent ease, and NATO and American officials made clear that they expected that control of Tripoli, which had been the final stronghold of the longtime Libyan leader, was now in doubt.
“Clearly the offensive for Tripoli is underway,” the State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said in a statement. The statement said “Qaddafi’s days are numbered” and urged the rebel leadership to prepare for a transfer of power and “maintain broad outreach across all segments of Libyan society and to plan for a post-Qaddafi Libya.”
After six months of inconclusive fighting, the assault on the capital unfolded at a breakneck pace, with insurgents capturing a military base of the vaunted Khamis Brigade, where they had expected to meet fierce resistance, then speeding toward Tripoli and through several neighborhoods of the capital effectively unopposed.
A separate group of rebels waged a fierce battle near the Rixos Hotel, a bastion of Qaddafi support near the city center. A team of rebels there claimed to have captured Seif Qaddafi. Rebels also claimed to have accepted the surrender of a second Qaddafi son, Muhammad.
Colonel Qaddafi made a late-night appeal in a recorded audio message on state television for his people to “save Tripoli” from a rebel offensive. “It is the obligation of all Libyans,” he said. “It is a question of life or death.”
Colonel Qaddafi made a similar appeal earlier in the evening, claiming he would fight “until the end,” but rebels continued to pour into Tripoli.
Al Arabiya television aired images of Libyans celebrating in central Tripoli and ripping down Qaddafi posters. Huge crowds gathered in Benghazi, the capital of the rebel-controlled eastern part of the country, as expectations grew that Colonel Qaddafi’s hold on power was crumbling.
Earlier Sunday, protesters took to the streets and cells of rebels inside Tripoli clashed with Qaddafi loyalists, opposition leaders and refugees from the city said. Fighting had been heavy in the morning, but by midnight Colonel Qaddafi’s forces had withdrawn from many districts without a major battle.
A rebel spokesman said insurgents had opened another line of attack on Tripoli by sending boats from the port city of Misurata to link up with fighters in the capital. It was not clear how many fighters were involved in that operation.
Colonel Qaddafi’s audio message, played over state television, said he would stay in Tripoli “until the end.” He said he remained in Tripoli but nothing in the scratchy message provided evidence of his whereabouts.
“The time is now to fight for your politics, your oil, your land,” he said. “I am with you in Tripoli, together until the ends of the earth.”
Moussa Ibrahim, a government spokesman, issued press statements through the night, saying more than 1,300 people had died in fighting in the city but that government troops remained in control. Those claims could not be confirmed.
But the turmoil inside Tripoli and the crumbling of defenses on its outskirts suggested a decisive shift in the revolt, the most violent of the Arab Spring uprisings.
NATO troops continued close air support of the rebels all day, with multiple strikes by alliance aircraft helping clear the road to Tripoli from Zawiyah. Rebel leaders in the west credited NATO with thwarting an attempt on Sunday by Qaddafi loyalists to reclaim Zawiyah with a flank assault on the city.
While rebels expressed hope that Colonel Qaddafi’s forces were losing their will to fight, support for the government could remain strong inside some areas of Tripoli. Analysts said the crucial role played by NATO in aiding the rebel advance in the relatively unpopulated areas outside the capital could prove far less effective in an urban setting, where concerns about civilian casualties could hamper the alliance’s ability to focus on government troops.
Most of the recent engagements between government and rebel forces have also involved relatively light fighting, and it was unclear how rebel forces, largely untrained and inconsistently commanded, would fare in intense urban warfare if loyalist troops put up a robust defense of Tripoli.
A senior American military officer who has been following the developments closely and who has been in contact with African and Arab military leaders in recent days, expressed caution on Sunday about the prospects for any imminent fall of the Qaddafi regime. Even if Colonel Qaddafi is deposed in some way, the senior officer said, there was still no clear plan for a political succession or for maintaining security in the country.
“The leaders I’ve talked to do not have a clear understanding how this will all play out,” said the officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the diplomatic delicacies surrounding the issue.
“Trying to predict what this guy is going to do is very, very difficult,” the officer said, referring to Colonel Qaddafi.Of particular note on Sunday, the rebels seemed to meet little resistance from the 32nd Brigade, a unit that NATO had considered one of the most elite in Libya and commanded by Khamis Qaddafi, one of the leader’s sons. The so-called Khamis Brigade was one of the crucial units enforcing the defense lines around the capital, extending about 17 miles outside Tripoli to the west and about 20 miles to the south.
Rebels said those points had been breached by Sunday afternoon despite the expectation that Colonel Qaddafi would use heavily armored units and artillery to defend them. It was unclear whether the government troops had staged a tactical retreat or been dislodged by NATO strikes.
After a brief gun battle, rebels took over one of the brigade’s bases along the road to Tripoli. Inside the base, rebels raises their flag and cheered wildly. They began carting away stores of weapons, including rocket-propelled grenades and mortars.
While the bodies of several dead loyalist soldiers were left on the ground in the base, it appeared the troops there had retreated rather than being forced out in battle. At least one structure suffered significant damage from NATO bombs.Earlier Sunday, rebels portrayed the uprising inside Tripoli as a sign that the end of the Qaddafi regime was near.
“We are coordinating the attacks inside, and our forces from outside are ready to enter Tripoli,” said Anwar Fekini, a rebel leader from the mountainous region in western Libya, speaking by telephone from Tunis. “If you can call any mobile number in Tripoli, you will hear in the background the beautiful sound of the bullets of freedom.”
Phone calls to several Tripoli residents in different neighborhoods confirmed that gunfire and explosions were widespread. And there were reports of frequent NATO jet flights and airstrikes — a common accompaniment to the drumbeat of the rebel advance in the past week.
While American officials say they are unsure how the battle for Tripoli will play out, they say they are preparing contingency plans if and when Qaddafi’s regime falls to help prevent the vast Libyan government stockpiles of weapons, particularly portable antiaircraft missiles, from being dispersed.
Untold numbers of the missiles, including SA-7’s, have already been looted from government arsenals, and American officials fear they could circulate widely, including heat-seeking antiaircraft missiles that could be used against civilian airliners. “What I worry about most is the proliferation of these weapons,” the senior military officer said, noting that the United States has already been quietly meeting with leaders of Libya’s neighbors in Africa’s Sahel region to stem the flow of the missiles.
The officer said that small teams of American military and other government weapons experts could be sent into Libya after the fall of Qaddafi’s regime to help Libyan rebel and other international forces secure the weapons.
Colonel Qaddafi has issued several audio broadcasts in recent days claiming he will turn back the rebel advance. But he has given no clear indication of where he might be speaking from, a topic of increasing speculation as rumors have swirled that he is preparing to flee, or has already left Libya.
If Colonel Qaddafi’s location remained unknown, it became increasingly clear that even his most senior aides were making exits of their own.
The Tunisian state news agency reported Saturday that Libya’s oil minister, Omran Abukraa, had sought refuge in Tunisia after leaving Tripoli on what was ostensibly a business trip abroad. If confirmed, his defection would be the third of a senior government official in the past week.
Abdel Salam Jalloud, a former Qaddafi deputy, was reported to have defected Friday. A senior security official, Nassr al-Mabrouk Abdullah, flew to Cairo with his family on Monday.
Mustafa Abdel-Jalil, the chairman of the rebel government, the National Transitional Council, said that he hoped Colonel Qaddafi and the rest of his inner circle would follow. “That would be a good thing that will end the bloodshed and help us avoid material costs,” he said. “But I do not expect that he will do that.”
After reports of the Tripoli fighting began, some residents said that a group of rebel fighters had infiltrated the city from the east and were spearheading the uprising, surprising the pro-Qaddafi forces who had fortified for an attack from the western approach guarded by Zawiyah. Residents added that in recent weeks rebels had also smuggled weapons into the city by boat to the beaches east of Tripoli to prepare. Their claims could not be independently confirmed.
The latest phase of the battle began after rebels on Saturday drove the remaining loyalists troops out of Zawiyah, the strategic oil refinery town 30 miles west of Tripoli. After a week of heavy fighting there, residents began to celebrate in the main square.
The Arab news network Al Jazeera reported that Zlitan, a crucial Qaddafi barracks town east of Tripoli, also had fallen to the rebels. They captured Gharyan, the gateway to the south, last week.
Farther east, the rebels claimed to have seized the residential areas of the oil port of Brega, a prize that has changed hands many times since the uprising began.
A senior American official said Colonel Qaddafi’s days “are numbered.”
“It is clear that the situation is moving against Qaddafi,” Jeffrey D. Feltman, an assistant secretary of state, said after meeting rebel leaders in Benghazi, the rebel capital. “The opposition continues to make substantial gains on the ground while his forces grow weaker.”
Rebel leaders were optimistic. “The end is very near” for Colonel Qaddafi, said Mr. Abdel-Jalil, the leader of the rebel’s governing council. “We have contacts with people from the inner circle of Qaddafi,” he said. “All evidence is that the end is very near, with God’s grace.”
Amid worries from the West and humanitarian groups that rebel fighters might seek revenge against Qaddafi supporters, the rebels’ National Transitional Council said Saturday that it was reissuing a booklet reminding its mostly novice fighters about the international laws of war.
But the battle was hardly over. In the past six months, the rebels have frequently proven unable to hold captured territory, sometimes keeping it no longer than a few days. Government forces were still fighting fiercely outside Zawiyah, and in Brega they controlled the oil refinery.
Kareem Fahim
New York Times