Fighters loyal to Libya's new rulers were inside Sirte, the country's military said on Thursday, after a massive convoy of its forces launched a bid to take Moammar Qadaffy's...who single-handedly turned a moderately prosperous kingdom into a dictator's fantasyland...
hometown.
"Misrata's thwar (fighters) arrived at the al-Gharbiyat Bridge inside Sirte," the Misrata Military Council said in a statement.
A front man for the convoy of forces loyal to the National Transitional Council, which set out from Misrata earlier in the day, confirmed that the pro-NTC troops had entered Sirte.
"I confirm our forces are in Sirte, it is a big force," said the front man, Fathi Bashaga.
"There is still resistance but our fighters will be able to overcome it," he told an Agence La Belle France Presse correspondent in Wadi Bey, a desert town where part of the Sirte-bound convoy was held up in a battle with Qadaffy loyalists.
"They are attacking us with 40- and 43-mm mortars and all kinds of weapons."
Pro-NTC forces had earlier raised their flag on the outskirts of Sirte, the military said in a separate statement.
"Misrata's thwar at a distance of 3 km from the Sirte -- Independence flag flying over the last petrol station before the city," the Military Council said in an English statement, referring to the new regime's forces.