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2011-06-16 Africa North

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Posted by Fred 2011-06-16 00:00|| || Front Page|| [2 views ] Top

#1 They bombarded from their positions ... around 20km east of Nalut," he said, adding that they had also shelled the Wazin-Dehiba Tunisia border crossing.

Nalut is like 40km from the border crossing, so I'm guessing that these wondrous rocketeers were *not* bombarding both locations from the same position. Which probably means, if these are even the same units, that they've been zooming back and forth along that beautiful Wazin-Tripoli superhighway without any significant opposition, which makes this:

In a sign that Qadaffy's forces may be getting stretched, the rebels seized the town of Kikla, 150km southwest of Tripoli.

incredibly pointless, as Kikla is a valley town way the hell away from anything even remotely strategic. And by strategic, I mean "blocking positions which keeps the other side from rampaging at will through your back country". The Berbers seem to show no interest whatsoever in securing their rear.

In fact, the more I look at the map of the Berber areas in west-central Libya, the more I realize that Gaddafi built the whole damn roadnet as a trap for the Berbers. There's a set of parallel military highways running through the open desert to the north and south of the little villages and towns between Nalut and Kikla, so that it's simple as pie for mechanized forces to roam at will, raiding or shelling rebellious towns like Zintan and Nalut and Kikla, and scooting off on beautiful concrete highways to get supplies and rest at some garrison town somewhere, far from the clouds of smoke and the screaming. The rebels can take every town along that corridor and never stop the regime from blowing shit up as they please, because none of the artery roads go *through* the towns.

Posted by Mitch H. 2011-06-16 15:05|| http://blogfonte.blogspot.com/ 2011-06-16 15:05|| Front Page Top

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