Pro-Kadafi forces counter offensives in 2 Libyan cities

Reporting from north of Bani Walid, Libya —  Forces loyal to ousted Libyan leader Moammar Kadafi put up fierce resistance Friday on two fronts, fending off revolutionary fighters trying to take a pair of holdout cities that have defied the nation’s new transitional government.

Anti-Kadafi fighters launched major attacks on Surt, the coastal town where Kadafi was born, and Bani Walid, a desert city that benefited from the longtime leader’s financial largesse. But in both cases the attackers’ predictions of quick and decisive victories proved wrong.

At day’s end, Libya’s new rulers were facing the disturbing prospect of potentially protracted battles to oust Kadafi loyalists from the two towns.

The revolution that seemed sealed with last month’s stunning victory in Tripoli, the capital, is now clearly facing a major obstacle in the two contested cities and a third pro-Kadafi stronghold, the city of Sabha in the south.

While in hiding, Kadafi has urged his followers to mount a guerrilla war. His spokesman, also in hiding, has vowed that the former regime’s loyalists would turn Libya into “a true hell.”

Snipers and mortar and rocket fire met fighters who attempted to storm the two cities, both of which had pre-conflict populations of about 100,000. Many residents have fled amid weeks-long sieges cutting off both towns.

In Bani Walid, about 95 miles southeast of Tripoli, the day began with hundreds of volunteers driving toward the city in pickups turned into gun trucks, exuding confidence that they soon would reach the town center and defeat its defenders.

But heavy resistance from Kadafi loyalists slowed the fighters’ advance. They crouched behind dun-colored buildings and struggled in intense street fighting to move forward amid mortar fire and sniper rounds. The pro-Kadafi forces were poised to pick off the interlopers from sniper positions in buildings and on the town’s high ground.

“Once we got into town, the bullets seemed to be coming from everywhere,” said one fighter from Tripoli, Nabil Drawil, who said his unit advanced about 200 yards into Bani Walid before withdrawing under heavy fire. “We passed some buildings, and then they started shooting at us from behind.”

Pro-Kadafi forces spread oil on some of the town’s roads, invading fighters said, making it hard for vehicles to get traction.

At least six revolutionary fighters were killed and several dozen injured in the offensive, doctors said. It was the second time in the last week that anti-Kadafi fighters had been repulsed in an attack on Bani Walid, where a local radio station urged residents to resist the invaders.

At various staging areas north of the city, the fighters seemed stunned and in disarray. It was often not clear who was in charge. Ambulances waited for a steady stream of wounded coming from town.

There also appeared to be tension among fighters from different parts of Libya. All are volunteers, many civilians who had never fired a gun before joining the revolution that began early this year.

By nightfall, the forces poised to take Bani Walid earlier in the day were in a full retreat, speeding out of town in trucks as occasional shells from loyalist forces fell nearby.

Many fighters were openly distressed that the people of Bani Walid appeared to have remained largely loyal to Kadafi even after Tripoli and much of the nation backed a rebellion that ended his 40-year reign.

“We don’t really know who’s with us and who’s against us in Bani Walid,” said Ismael Abuda, 24, a former hospitality student in London who sported a razor haircut and wore blue denim shorts while wielding a Kalashnikov rifle and, on his waist, a Beretta 9-millimeter pistol. “There are a lot of civilians there, but they’re still with Kadafi. We have nothing to do with them.”

Libya’s rebel forces enjoyed remarkable success in extending their control to much of this vast country, but they generally counted on support from popular uprisings within cities and towns. The fighters have had less success when attacking hostile terrain where Libya’s former leader remained popular.

In Surt, about 250 miles east of Tripoli, a massive force of several thousand troops and hundreds of fighting vehicles — including a few tanks — advanced on the town most symbolically linked to Kadafi. But here too resistance was intense, blunting hopes of a swift victory.

At least 13 anti-Kadafi fighters were reported killed and more than a dozen injured in fighting in Surt, a transitional government spokesman said Friday.

There was no definitive word on casualties among civilians and pro-Kadafi defenders in Surt and Bani Walid.

NATO jets have been pounding the two towns in recent weeks, but both cities’ defenders appear to be well dug in and are exercising caution in concealing mortar tubes, rocket launchers and other weapons systems that could be targeted from above.

Among those urging pro-Kadafi holdouts to back Libya’s new government Friday was Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who became the latest national leader to visit Tripoli since Kadafi was driven out, following Thursday’s appearance by Britain’s David Cameron and France’s Nicolas Sarkozy. Erdogan, who has been on a mission to extend Turkey’s influence in the region, pledged that his country would give aid to the new Libyan administration and sent a message to the pro-Kadafi Libyans in Bani Walid and Surt.

“I call on my brothers in these two cities to unite with Tripoli and Benghazi,” said Erdogan, naming Libya’s first and second cities, both firmly in the camp of the transitional government. “I call on my brothers … so that there is no more bloodshed and more people do not die.”

In New York, meanwhile, the United Nations handed Libya’s U.N. seat to the Transitional National Council, the nation’s provisional governing body. The U.N. also lifted and modified some sanctions imposed on Kadafi’s regime.

patrick.mcdonnell@latimes.com