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| Africa North |
| Libya Rebels Say Bir Ghanam Taken |
| 2011-08-07 |
| [An Nahar] Rebel commanders said their fighters captured the town of Bir Ghanam, 80 kilometers south of the Libyan capital, on Saturday. An Agence La Belle France Presse correspondent, although he did not visit Bir Ghanam, was with the several hundred fighters as they advanced north on a road strewn with burned-out vehicles of the Libyan army, some with bodies of dead soldiers inside. Black smoke hovered over the road. Most of the rebels in Bir Ghanam's capture were members of a "Tripoli Battalion" made up of volunteers from the capital and other coastal towns who received military training in the Nafusa Mountains, southwest of the capital. |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #4 Nice, Mitch. :-) |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2011-08-07 21:10 |
| #3 BTW, check this out, from two weeks ago. Sounds like they were clearing mines from the roads leading out of the mountains under long-range rocket fire, while NATO was tank-plinking a dug-in force at the crossroads. |
| Posted by: Mitch H. 2011-08-07 18:05 |
| #2 This is nowhere near Brega, or even the fighting in Zliten. Bir al-Ghanam is the key high-desert crossroads for the area between the south-central Tunisian border, the Nafusa Mountain range, and az-Zawiyah on the coast to the west of Tripoli. Sounds like they're across both the az-Zawiyah road *and* the road to Surman, also on the coast to the east of az-Zawiyah. And I found another article from an Aljezeera embed who corroborates this. If they can *keep* bir al-Ghanam, it's an excellent blocking position covering the whole of the Nafusas and the border crossings. It basically means that the south-western rebels now have a rear, whereas before the government forces could raid at will all along the two-hundred-kilometer string of rebel towns. This is a natural flow from the NATO-supported (and probably planned) offensive of the last week against the Gaddafi posts threatening the Wazin border crossing. And they're hitting Gaddafi where he isn't - some of the reports from last week indicated his people had concentrated along the Garyan-Sabha corridor in probable response to a spectacular cross-desert raid on Sabha from the southeast. If I thought all this was planned, I'd be deeply impressed. But I rather think that what we're seeing is the Gaddafi clan losing control because of all the uncoordinated, enthusiastic rushing about of their fragmented opposition. You can only play fire brigade for so long before somebody slips through a gap you left while you were putting out five other fires elsewhere. The Gaddafis win whenever it becomes a professionalized slugging match for an urbanized core. They get nibbled to death by ducks so long as it's a matter of light-cavalry charging about - for one thing, it exposes the fire brigades to NATO air strikes if NATO is paying attention at the right time. |
| Posted by: Mitch H. 2011-08-07 17:57 |
| #1 Black smoke hovered over the road. Near the spot? Onwards, we advance always towards Brega. |
| Posted by: S 2011-08-07 12:02 |