SIRTE, Libya – Revolutionary fighters struggled to make gains in an assault on Moammar Gadhafi’s hometown Saturday, with bloody street-by-street battles against loyalist forces fiercely defending the most symbolic of the shattered regime’s remaining strongholds.
The attack in the Mediterranean coastal city of Sirte contrasted with a stalemate in the mountain enclave of Bani Walid, where demoralized anti-Gadhafi forces tried to regroup after being beaten back by loyalist snipers and gunners holding strategic high ground.
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Intense resistance has stalled forces of Libya’s new leadership trying to crush the dug-in fighters loyal to Gadhafi, weeks after the former rebels swept into Tripoli on Aug. 21 and pushed the country’s leader out of power and into hiding.
Sirte and Bani Walid are the main bastions of backers of the old regime along Libya’s coastal plain, but smaller holdouts remain in the deserts of the center of the country — and another major stronghold, Sabha, lies in the deep south.
The resistance has raised fears of a protracted insurgency of the sort that has played out in Iraq and Afghanistan, even as the transitional government tries to establish its authority and move toward eventual elections.
A military spokesman for the transitional government said revolutionaries do not know Gadhafi’s location.
Col. Ahmed Omar Bani pointed to the still-uncollected bounty of nearly $2 million that the new leadership has put on the fugitive leader’s head, saying, “Up to now we don’t have any certain information or intelligence about his whereabouts.”
Columns of black smoke rose over Sirte, as revolutionary fighters backed by heavy machine guns and rockets tried to push through crowded residential areas in the city. They claimed to have progressed less than a mile into the city, along the main coastal highway from the west.
The forces were met by a rain of gunfire, rockets and mortar shells. A field hospital set up at a gas station outside Sirte filled with wounded fighters, including some from a convoy hit by a rocket-propelled grenade. Twenty-four anti-Gadhafi fighters were killed and 54 wounded in the day’s battles, the military council from the nearby city of Misrata reported.
The pro-regime radio station in Sirte repeatedly aired a recorded message it said was from Gadhafi, urging the city’s defenders to fight on.
“You must resist fiercely. You must kick them out of Sirte,” the voice said. “If they get inside Sirte, they are going to rape the women.” The voice resembled Gadhafi’s, but its authenticity could not be confirmed.
In a phone call Friday to Syrian-based Al-Rai TV, which has become the mouthpiece for the former regime, Gadhafi spokesman Moussa Ibrahim vowed, “We have the ability to continue this resistance for months.”
The conditions inside Sirte were reportedly increasingly dire for those caught in the cross-fire. Nouri Abu Bakr, a 42-year-old teacher fleeing the city, said there is no electricity or medicine, and food supplies are nearly exhausted.
“Gadhafi gave all the people weapons, but those fighting are the Gadhafi brigade of loyalists,” he said.
Hassan Dourai, Sirte representative in the new government’s interim government, said fighters reported seeing one of Gadhafi’s son, Muatassim, shortly before the offensives began Friday, but he has not been spotted since the battles intensified.
The whereabouts of Gadhafi and several of his sons remain unknown. Other family members have fled to neighboring Algeria and Niger.
Most of the hundreds of fighters assaulting Sirte are from Misrata, a city to the northwest along the coast that held out for weeks against a brutal Gadhafi siege during the civil war.
Revolutionary commanders were trying to open a second front into Sirte, from the east. They said they were trying to reach a surrender deal with elders in most of the Harawa region, about 50 miles east of Sirte, to open a possible new pathway. But fighting was reported in the area Saturday, suggesting efforts were stalled.
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