Libyan Rebels Gain Inches Toward Link to Tripoli

QAWALISH, Libya — Rebels opposed to Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi seized control of this village in the mountains on Wednesday, extending their hold in western Libya and inching toward a supply route to the capital that they hope to sever.

After a half-day gun battle, Colonel Qaddafi’s soldiers yielded the town in the early afternoon, firing rockets and mortars to cover their withdrawal. The ordnance exploded on the hillsides around the town with reverberating booms and plumes of dust and smoke that briefly kept the rebels away.

But the rebels flowed in behind the fleeing troops, capturing more than a dozen of them and collecting the departed soldiers’ abandoned ammunition and equipment. Soon they were refueling their cars and pickup trucks at the gas station they now held.

Qawalish changed hands while rebels elsewhere reported making progress outside of Misurata, east of the capital, Tripoli. They said they were advancing toward the city of Zlitan. Those reports could not be independently confirmed.

In the mountains, the rebels said they hoped their day signaled new momentum for a fight in western Libya that had been deadlocked for more than a week. “We are doing well,” said Sofian Alhaj, a fighter who said he was a former employee of an investment company run by Seif al-Islam el-Qaddafi, one of the Libyan leader’s sons. “Now we will keep going, until we are in Tripoli.”

That ambition, if realized, would most likely occur in increments. Geographically, the seizure of Qawalish marked a minor shift in the front lines. But it moved the rebels within about 35 miles of Gharyan, a small city astride a strategic highway running south from Tripoli.

The highway heads south to Sabha, the central Libyan city that the rebels regard as a principal source of war matériel and other supplies for Colonel Qaddafi’s government, which is blockaded by NATO from the sea and pressured overland by rebels from the east.

As the war drags on into summer, capturing Gharyan has become one of the rebels’ main goals in western Libya. The rebels say that as many as 900 of Colonel Qaddafi’s soldiers are garrisoned there, backed by rockets and artillery, and that others are occupying villages and blocking positions along the roads from the west, making the approaches perilous.

Both sides suffered in the battle on Wednesday. At least 13 pro-Qaddafi soldiers and 7 rebels were killed. Many more were wounded, and the rebels claimed to have captured at least 15 soldiers.

After seizing Qawalish, the rebels did not press farther. Many of their fighters pulled back to the west in the midafternoon as Colonel Qaddafi’s soldiers shelled the village. After several ground-to-ground rockets exploded with roars that shook the town, scores of the rebels ran to their cars and trucks and sped away, leaving behind what appeared to be a holding force.

As the main body of rebels backed up, firing weapons in the air triumphantly, their behavior in the fight reflected the mix of enthusiasm, inexperience and poor state of equipment that has defined the anti-Qaddafi forces throughout Libya for much of the war.

When the rebels pushed into Qawalish with trucks crammed with fighters, some trucks contained only one rifle for every three or even four men. And when they moved forward on the village, the fighters stayed largely on the road or near its shoulders, neglecting to sweep and secure their flanks.

At one point, the advance carried the rebels past a Qaddafi mortar position just behind a short, steep ridge off the road. Shortly after the rebels arrived at a cluster of abandoned buildings that had been a Qaddafi defensive position and resupply point, the mortar crew opened fire, shelling the rebels effortlessly as they milled about.

The rounds landed perhaps 75 yards away, explosion after explosion, until most of the rebels drove away — again neglecting to climb the ridge and clear the pro-Qaddafi fighters behind it.

The area near the buildings also revealed the continuing hazards even in places that change hands: antipersonnel and antivehicle land mines that Colonel Qaddafi’s forces had buried along one of their flanks — threats that the rebels said they were just beginning to clear.