The battle for Brega

03/03/2011| IslamWeb

In the distance and high above, a Libyan air force jet circled over the town of Brega, a key oil port in eastern Libya around 330km from Sirte, one of Muammar Gaddafi’s last remaining strongholds.

As scores of revolution fighters armed with AK-47 assault rifles, shotguns and rocket-propelled grenade launchers watched from their staging point on the main road into town, the jet dipped and dropped its ordinance. A plume of smoke rose from Brega, and the sound of the explosion washed over the assembled crowd.

Somewhere near the town, anti-aircraft guns opened fire. The jet ascended and disappeared into the glare of the sun. A minute later, it reappeared and descended rapidly, coming straight for the road. It swooped low and sped overhead; a moment after it passed, an explosion erupted from the desert 80 meters away, shooting black smoke and sand into the air and scattering the revolution fighters in different directions down the road.

It was a rare event: a Libyan military airstrike witnessed directly by foreign journalists. Thankfully, there were no casualties, but a coordinated raid on Brega on Wednesday that witnesses said involved at least six jeeps and heavily armed troops left at least five civilians dead – one of them 12-years-old – and injured at least 21 more. It illustrated how the conflict between Gaddafi loyalists and opponents that began with street protests has quickly become something that looks more like an armed rebellion.

Little training

Early on Wednesday morning, reports of an attack on Brega reached Benghazi, Libya’s second-largest city and the heart of the uprising. Gaddafi forces had retaken the town, airport, and refinery and petrochemical plant, witnesses said.

The claim seemed plausible: during a visit to Brega and nearby Ajdabiya on Monday, Al Jazeera found the oil-rich front lines of the rebellion lightly defended by irregular fighters, ill-equipped and undisciplined, more prone to firing their weapons in the air than setting up defenses.

The number of Gaddafi troops was unclear, but they reportedly arrived before dawn and easily pushed the revolution troops back with fire from assault rifles, rocket-propelled grenades, mortars and air support.

At the main checkpoint outside Ajdabiya, close to Brega and around 160km south of Benghazi, hundreds of opposition fighters had heeded the call to come to Brega’s aid. Civilian cars filled the desert around the checkpoint; their occupants milled around the main road, cheering as armed people drove by in vans and pick-up trucks.

Fighters had positioned several 14.5mm anti-aircraft guns behind dirt embankments on either side of the road. On one side, a multi-barreled rocket launcher sat loaded and primed to fire. Farther ahead of the checkpoint, two 105mm M40 recoilless rifles – essentially tank barrels mounted on tripods – pointed toward Brega. A tank commandeered by the opposition arrived, then left.

The stream of reinforcements toward Brega continued; men wore plain clothes, tan and green camouflage and a wide assortment of gear that opposition forces said has been donated from the army. Body armor was nowhere to be seen; one man in a purple sweatshirt could be seen wearing an outdated helmet too large for his head and carrying a bazooka with no ammunition.

It remained unclear whether the opposition fighters, the majority of them civilians with little or no training, would be capable of repelling a serious assault by Gaddafi loyalists. Defected army officers at the checkpoint and down the road at the staging point outside Brega attempted to give tactical direction and training on the spot, but the opposition’s military efforts on Wednesday seemed to be in nobody’s control, with civilians approaching former colonels, still dressed in camouflage uniforms, to sketch out maneuvers in the sand.

The lack of training had serious ramifications. Fighters returning to the checkpoint from the road toward Brega complained about the number of friendly practice rounds fired in their direction, and at the Ajdabiya checkpoint, a man assisting with one of the recoilless rifles suffered severe injuries to his legs and back when someone fired the weapon, possibly exploding another unused round stacked nearby. Dozens of men rushed to the scene, and the injured man was carried to a car and driven away, his legs covered in blood.

Violence and confusion

At the opposition staging point outside Brega, before the airstrike forced the fighters to flee, Colonel Bashir Abdul-Qader attempted to coordinate a counterattack on the town.

He spoke with colleagues on a mobile phone and attempted to formulate a plan with various members of the opposition waiting on the road, but neither he nor they seemed prepared, and it was unclear who among the fighters in civilian clothes had the authority to lead.

Abdul-Qader said that the fighters would surround Brega and overwhelm it at night. The ultimate goal, he said, was a march on Sirte. But events outpaced the colonel’s lofty plans. As the Libyan jet circled above, opposition fighters were already pushing Gaddafi supporters out of Brega.

Some of the fighters on the road claimed that around 200 or 300 Gaddafi troops had become trapped in Brega University. But each story differed from the next. Some said the pro-Gaddafi forces had attacked with 50 vehicles; others said a Libyan air force pilot had ejected rather than bomb opposition positions around Ajdabiya. A car approached from Brega and a man jumped out to excitedly claim that the university had fallen. After him, another car heading back from town bore a wounded man.

Kilometers ahead, the gunfire and explosions continued. According to witnesses, pro-Gaddafi fighters fired indiscriminately when they drove into the Brega University compound on Wednesday morning, despite the presence of family residences on the university grounds.

By early afternoon, no fighting could be seen in Brega itself, though a small crater, apparently from the airstrike, still smoldered at the entrance to the university. Trucks and jeeps loaded with opposition fighters pushed into the scrubland south of the road, driving away the last remaining Gaddafi troops. As celebrating fighters shot automatic AK-47 fire into the air, a convoy of three large transport trucks inched through the crowd, carrying dozens of Egyptian workers who had been trapped in Sirte. They waved and cheered as the fighters tossed water bottles.

On the seaside road from the university to Brega Hospital, men perused the sand dunes were fighting had raged earlier in the day, picking up spent shell casings and packaging for 81mm mortars , though it was unclear whether the Gaddafi forces or the opposition had used them.

Child among dead

Outside Brega Hospital, a large crowd had gathered. Six bodies filled a small, one-room morgue. The man keeping watch inside said the two lying on the floor were pro-Gaddafi fighters. One appeared to be middle-aged, the other perhaps in his early 20s; neither seemed to be wearing a standard army uniform.

One of the civilian dead, a man with a white-and-black checkered kaffiyeh, bore a gaping gunshot wound to his neck – likely the result of a high-caliber machine gun round. Sand covered his face, and blood pooled around his collar.

Inside, staff treated the injured. One man receiving stitches had been hit by gunfire; the bullet had entered the front of his left thigh and exited the buttock on the same side.

Adult men were not the only casualties. Nurses wheeled in two small boys on gurneys; they were brothers, a doctor said. Faraj Omran, 7, had been hit in the nose by a piece of shrapnel, possibly a bullet fragment. He laid flat on a gurney, shaking and staring fearfully at the crowd around him. His 14-year-old brother Hussein lay nearby, a bandage over his forehead where he too had been hit. Another brother, 12-year-old Hassan, had been shot to death, a doctor said.

Some opposition witnesses claimed that Gaddafi’s forces had dragged families out of their cars on the main road, using them as human shields once they were pinned down inside the university grounds. Throughout the day, vans and taxis could be seen taking families down the road away from Brega toward Benghazi; many times, the occupants would wave the victory sign to onlookers.

In the hospital, doctors showed the identification card of the one of the dead men alleged to be part of the Gaddafi loyalists, Hassan Ahmed Mukhtar, eager to point out the line that indicated his status as an immigrant from Niger. But the card was issued by the Libyan government, and it was impossible to know whether the man was one of the supposed "mercenaries" recruited by Gaddafi to put down the uprising.

Despite the show of air power, the early-morning assault on Brega appeared to either have been a failure or an attempt to probe the revolution’s front lines. With thousands of young men reportedly signing up to join the new army of liberated eastern Libya, and defected army officers working to bring organization to the front lines, the chance of Gaddafi being able to regain a foothold in the strategic lands east of Sirte appears to be shrinking.

PHOTO CAPTION

Libyans celebrate after they retake the Brega town from pro-Moaamar Gadhafi fighters, in Brega, east of Libya, on Wednesday, March 2, 2011.

Source: Aljazeera.net