Muammar Qadhafi loyalists killed 17 guards outside an oil refinery on Monday in an apparent attempt to disrupt a drive by Libya's new rulers to seize the ousted ruler's last bastions and revive the oil-based economy. A Syrian-based television station that has broadcast messages from Qadhafi in the past said he was still in Libya, but it was unable to air a televised appearance for security reasons.
"It was meant to show the leader among his fighters and people, leading the struggle from Libyan lands, and not from Venezuela or Niger or anywhere else," Mishan Jabouri, owner of the Arrai channel, told viewers. He read out a text quoting Qadhafi as saying: "We cannot give up Libya to colonisation one more time ... There is nothing more to do except fight until victory."
Libya's new ruling National Transitional Council (NTC) says that as long as Qadhafi remains on the run he is capable of attracting followers to a dangerous insurgency - of the kind which the refinery attack might prefigure. Qadhafi fighters in more than a dozen vehicles drove to the refinery, 20 km (13 miles) from the coastal town of Ras Lanuf, and fired on a checkpoint outside, witnesses said.
The refinery, which is not fully operational, was undamaged, but the entrance, guarded by a blackened NTC tank, was littered with used hand grenades. A doctor at Ras Lanuf hospital said the death toll had risen to 17 after one of two wounded people died. "We heard firing and shelling at around 9 in the morning from Qadhafi loyalists," refinery worker Ramadan Abdel Qader, who had been shot in the foot, told Reuters.
The assault occurred only hours after the NTC announced it had resumed some oil production, which had been all but halted since anti-Qadhafi protests turned into civil war in March. The NTC is struggling to assert its control over Libya and capture a handful of stubbornly-defended Qadhafi-held towns.
NTC forces, which seized Tripoli on August 23, said they were meeting fierce resistance on the fourth day of fighting for the desert town of Bani Walid, 150 km (95 miles) south-east of the capital, and were edging towards Sirte, Qadhafi's birthplace. Libya's economy depends almost entirely on oil and gas. Interim Prime Minister Mahmoud Jibril said on Sunday some oil production had resumed, but would not say where or how much.
Libya holds Africa's largest crude oil reserves and sold about 85 percent of its exports to Europe under Qadhafi. Western oil firms, including Italy's Eni and Austria's OMV, are keen to restore production. Eni's chief executive told Reuters his priority was to restart gas exports via a pipeline from Libya to Italy by October or November. Resuming oil output was less urgent. "We are by far the biggest player in Libya, both in oil and in gas, so I came here with the idea of 'back to normal'," Paolo Scaroni said during a visit to Tripoli.
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