Libyan rebels pushed further west on Sunday to retake more territory abandoned by Muammar Qadhafi's retreating forces, which have been weakened by Western air strikes.
Emboldened by the capture of the strategic town of Ajdabiyah with the help of foreign warplanes on Saturday, the rebels have regained the initiative and are back in control of all the main oil terminals in the eastern half of the North African country.
"There are no Qadhafi soldiers here. We control all the town," rebel fighter Youssef Ahmed, 22, said in the town of Bin Jawad, 525 km (330 miles) east of the capital Tripoli. A Reuters correspondent in Bin Jawad saw more than two dozen rebel pick-up trucks mounted with machine guns in the town centre, as fighters were shooting in the air in celebration.
Bin Jawad is the westernmost point the rebels reached in early March, before they were pushed back by Qadhafi's better-equipped forces to their stronghold of Benghazi.
Rebels said Qadhafi loyalists had retreated westwards and that they planned to push on towards Sirte, the Libyan leader's heavily defended home area on the Mediterranean coast.
"We want to go to Sirte today. I don't know if it will happen," said 25-year-old Marjai Agouri as he waited with another 100 rebels along the main coastal road outside Bin Jawad with three multiple rocket launchers, six anti-aircraft guns and around a dozen pickup trucks mounted with machine guns.
The rebel advance is a rapid reversal of three weeks of losses and indicates Western air strikes under by a UN no-fly zone are shifting the battlefield dynamics in their favour.
Their gains put the rebels back in control of all the main oil terminals in the eastern half of Libya - Es Sider, Ras Lanuf, Brega, Zueitina and Tobruk.
In Ras Lanuf, battle debris was scattered around the eastern gate, which had been hit by an air strike.
At least three trucks of Qadhafi's forces were smouldering. Ammunition, plastic bags of rations left behind and a tin bowl with a half eaten meal on the ground suggested Qadhafi's forces had beaten a hasty retreat.
Mansour al-Breik, a 20-year-old shopkeeper now turned fighter, said: "The air strikes were from midnight to 3 am." On the way into Ras Lanuf a Reuters correspondent saw a bus loaded with Qadhafi soldiers who had been taken prisoner, escorted by a machinegun-mounted pickup.
As foreign media passed, rebels chanted: "Sarkozy, Sarkozy, Sarkozy" in reference to the French president and air strikes by coalition states including France aimed at protecting civilians.
As the front line shifted towards the heartland of Qadhafi's support, government forces pounded Misrata in the west with tank, mortar and artillery fire on Saturday, and resumed shelling on Sunday after a pause that followed an air strike.
"Misrata is under attack, the city and the port area where thousands of workers are. We don't know whether it's artillery or mortars," the resident, called Saadoun, told Reuters by telephone from the city on Sunday. A Misrata resident told Reuters by phone the humanitarian situation in the city was very bad, but that rebels had said they would fight until the city was freed from Qadhafi.
"Misrata has been under siege for 38 days," another resident, Sami, said by telephone. "Not much food, water is a rarity and people are obliged to use wells to get water. We have problems with medicines."
A rebel in Misrata told Reuters Qadhafi was putting all his weight into attacking Misrata so he could control the whole of the west of the country after losing all the east.
Libyan government spokesman Mussa Ibrahim told reporters in the capital Tripoli that Qadhafi was directing his forces but appeared to suggest the leader might be moving around the country so as to keep his whereabouts a mystery.
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