![]() His account could not be independently verified. They were all civilians and they were killed execution-style,” he said. NTC official Abdullah Kenshil told Reuters that pro-Gaddafi forces in Bani Walid had killed at least 16 civilians there in the last two days after suspecting they supported the NTC. Seven NTC fighters were also killed in an ambush by pro-Gaddafi soldiers inside Bani Walid, NTC officials said.Īt Bani Walid, troops from other areas have been arguing with local fighters, and there has been talk of traitors infiltrating the ranks and sabotaging the assault. In another incident, a fighter wounded himself and another fighter after losing control of his machinegun. One man shot his own head off and killed another fighter while handling a rocket-propelled grenade in full view of a Reuters team. ![]() Several attempts by NTC fighters to take Bani Walid and Sirte in the past week have ended in disarray and panicked retreat.Īt Bani Walid, bored militiamen fired weapons at camels and sheep while awaiting orders on Wednesday, as much a danger to themselves as to Gaddafi fighters holed up in the town. However, chaos prevailed among fighters besieging Gaddafi’s other two remaining major strongholds. NATO countries gave the NTC another boost by extending for three more months the air cover that helped anti-Gaddafi fighters to victory. This is still resisting, but it will fall,” said another NTC military spokesman, Ahmed Bani.ĬNN, citing a correspondent in Sabha, reported that NTC fighters had occupied its centre on Wednesday after taking the airport and a fort the day before. “We control most of Sabha apart from the al-Manshiya district. Gaddafi loyalists have been holding out in Jufra and Sabha along with the bigger strongholds of Bani Walid, southeast of Tripoli, and Gaddafi’s hometown of Sirte since the fall of the capital in August. However, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons says Libya kept 9.5 tonnes of mustard gas at a secret desert location, although it could no longer deliver it. Under Gaddafi, Libya was supposed to have destroyed its stockpile of chemical weapons in early 2004 as part of a rapprochement with the West under which it also abandoned a nuclear programme. His comments could not be confirmed independently. “There was a depot of chemical weapons and now it is under the control of our fighters.” “The whole of the Jufra area - we have been told it has been liberated,” spokesman Fathi Bashaagha told reporters in the city of Misrata.
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