Libyan rebels denied Sunday reports they had lost control of Bir al-Ghanam, a key staging point some 80 km south of Tripoli.
A small settlement in the desert, Bir al-Ghanam is also the closest rebels have come to Muammar Qaddafi’s stronghold in the capital during their six-month bid to oust the country's strongman from power.
Rebel commanders in the region said Saturday they had seized control of Bir al-Ghanam in an offensive in which four anti-Qaddafi fighters had died.
Taking the town – which lies on a highway leading north to the Mediterranean coast and on to Tripoli – would break weeks of stalemate during which rebels have been unable to make big advances despite NATO air strikes on government forces.
Libyan Prime Minister Al-Baghdadi Ali al-Mahmoudi said Sunday that rebels, under NATO air cover, had seized Bir al-Ghanam temporarily but they had been driven out by local volunteers and Libyan forces.
“This is exactly what happened in Bir al-Ghanam, which is back in the hands of the honorable and brave local tribes … and under the legitimate control of the government of Libya,” he told reporters in Tripoli.
But a local rebel commander rejected that version of events. “Qaddafi is a liar because Bir al-Ghanam is under our control,” Colonel Juma Ibrahim, a rebel commander from the nearby town of Zintan, told Reuters. “We are still in the same position we were yesterday.”
He said that in the past 24 hours rebel forces had, in fact, pushed about 10 km northeast of Bir al-Ghanam, and were now planning to push toward the coastal town of Zawiyah.
Zawiyah, which lies 50 km west of Tripoli, has been the scene of two uprisings which were smashed by Qaddafi’s security forces. A large contingent of the rebels fighting around Bir al-Ghanam are from Zawiyah.
But the rebels claims of advances come as they find themselves confronted with casualties and logistical challenges that threaten to leave their fighters without ammunition in the face of a Qaddafi counter-offensive.
On Monday four rebels were killed and some fifty wounded in skirmishes with Qaddafi forces,
In eastern Libya, where rebels and pro-Qaddafi forces are fighting along another front, rebel commanders said they were making a big push to capture the coastal oil town of Brega, about 780 km from Tripoli.
But they said progress was slow because Qaddafi’s forces had laid minefields around the town. “We don’t want to lose anybody so we’re moving slowly but surely,” said rebel spokesman Mohammad Zawawi.\
A recent draft of the National Transition Council's plan for a 'post-Qaddafi' Libya admitted they were relying on dissension, rather than military force, to oust the country's dictator of nearly forty years.