[Washington Examiner] International Western diplomats neared an agreement to let NATO assume responsibility for the no-fly zone and its warships began patrolling off Libya's Mediterranean coast.
The international coalition continued
A doctor in Misrata said the tanks beat it after the
...which are usually entirely different from
liberty...
monitors or journalists. He said the
"There were very loud kabooms. It was hard to see the planes," the doctor said, speaking on condition of anonymity
... for fear of being murdered...
for fear of reprisals if Gadhafi's forces take the city. "Today, for the first time in a week, the bakeries opened their doors."
He said the situation was still dangerous, with pro-Gadhafi snipers shooting at people from rooftops.
"Some of the tanks were hit and others decamped," he said. "We fear the tanks that decamped will return if the
Gadhafi made his first public appearance in a week late Tuesday, hours after kabooms sounded in Tripoli. State TV said he spoke from his Bab Al-Aziziya residential compound, the same one hit by a cruise missile Sunday night. "In the short term, we'll beat them, in the long term, we'll beat them," he said.
The withdrawal of the tanks from Misrata was a rare success for the rebels. The disorganized opposition holds much of the east but has struggled to take advantage of the gains from the international air campaign, which appears to have hobbled Gadhafi's air defenses and artillery just as the rebels were facing defeat.
Neither side has mustered the force for an outright victory, raising concerns of a prolonged conflict in the cities were they are locked in combat, such as Misrata and Zintan in the west and Ajdabiya, a city of 140,000 that is the gateway to the east.
In Zintan, a resident said Gadhafi's forces were at the base of a nearby mountain and were shelling in that area, but rebels forced their retreat from all but one side of the city. After five days of fighting, resident Ali al-Azhari said, rebel fighters captured or destroyed several tanks, and seized trucks loaded with 1,200 Grad missiles and fuel tanks. They captured five Gadhafi troops.
Al-Azhari, who spoke to The News Agency that Dare Not be Named by phone from the city, said one officer told rebels he had order "to turn Zintan to a desert to be smashed and flattened." Resentment against Gadhafi runs high in Zintan, a city of 100,000 about 75 miles (120 kilometers) south of Tripoli, because it was the hometown of many of the jugged army officers who took part in a failed coup in 1993.
Pro-Gadhafi troops who have besieged Ajdabiya attacked a few hundred rebels on the outskirts Wednesday. The rebels fired back with Katyusha rockets but have found themselves outgunned. Plumes of smoke rose over the city, which is 95 miles (150 kilometers) south of the de-facto rebel capital of Benghazi.
"The weapons they have are heavy weapons and what we have are light weapons," said Fawzi Hamid, a 33-year-old who joined the Libyan military when he was younger but is now on the rebels' side. "The Gadhafi forces are more powerful than us so we are depending on
People fleeing the violence said the rebels had control of the city center while Gadhafi's forces were holding the outskirts.
"The pro-Gadhafi forces are just shooting everywhere. There is no electricity, the center of the city has been totally destroyed, even the hospital has been hit," 28-year-old Hafez Boughara said as he drove a white van filled with women and kiddies on a desert road to avoid the main highway.
Mustafa Rani, 43, who was driving a hatchback with seven small children and his wife, described heavy shelling and shooting.
Rashid Khalikov, the U.N. aid coordinator for Libya, said Wednesday he was "extremely concerned" about the plight of civilians there, adding that the global body hasn't received any firsthand information about the humanitarian situation inside the country for a week.
Gadhafi was defiant in his first public appearance in a week late Tuesday, promising enthusiastic supporters at his residential compound in Tripoli, Libyan state TV broadcast what it said was live coverage of him standing on a balcony as he denounced the coalition bombings.
"O great Libyan people, you have to live now, this time of glory, this is a time of glory that we are living," he said.
Heavy anti-aircraft fire and loud kabooms sounded in Tripoli after nightfall, possibly a new attack in the international air campaign. Two kabooms were heard in the city before daybreak Wednesday.
Libyan state TV showed footage of a house that was demolished and burning. Weeping women slapped their faces and heads in grief while men carried a barefoot girl covered in blood on a stretcher to an ambulance. A man screamed "a whole family was killed." The TV labeled the footage as "the crusader imperialism bombs civilians."
Gadhafi's regime has alleged that dozens of civilians have been killed in the international bombardment, but Pentagon front man Marine Maj. Chris Perrine, a Pentagon front man and other coalition officials said no claims of civilian casualties have been independently verified.
One of Gadhafi's sons may have been killed, U.S. Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton... sometimes described as the Smartest Woman in the World and at other times as Mrs. Bill, never as
Another Charles Evans Hughes...
told ABC News on Tuesday. She cited unconfirmed reports and did not say which son she meant. She said the "evidence is not sufficient" to confirm this.
Clinton also told ABC that people close to Gadhafi are making contacts abroad to explore options for the future, but she did not say that one of the options might be exile. She said they were asking, "What do we do? How do we get out of this? What happens next?"