Escaping sniper fire and a steady rain of artillery shells, hundreds of refugees fled from Zawiyah on Wednesday as Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s loyalists fought to keep control of this strategic city — a half-hour drive from Tripoli, the capital — and its oil refinery.
About 2,000 families from Zawiyah, Tripoli and other cities near the fighting on the Libyan coast passed through one rebel checkpoint on Wednesday, according to rebel officials registering the names. Cars and trucks, piled high with refrigerators and other household items, filled a road to the Nafusah Mountains.
People fleeing Tripoli said there was no electricity there on Wednesday, a further sign of the toll the rebellion has taken in Colonel Qaddafi’s stronghold, where prices of basic goods have soared amid shortages.
The exodus was occurring five days after a broad offensive by the rebels, in which they have collaborated with local fighters to seize strategic towns in a bid to shift the course of a stalled war. Their gains have been hard to tally: reports of towns falling to the rebels are frequently amended hours later.
As rebel officials chased rumors of high-level defections from Colonel Qaddafi’s inner circle, his government confirmed on Tuesday that a senior security official had left. The Libyan government’s chief spokesman, Moussa Ibrahim, said that the official, Nassr al-Mabrouk Abdullah, who flew to Cairo on a private plane on Monday, had suffered “social and emotional pressures” before his defection.
The fighting on Wednesday continued in cities that dot the western mountains, including Gheryan in the east and Tiji in the west. Heavy fighting was also reported in Sabratha, on the coast, and doctors who worked in Surman said that city was under rebel control.
By the early afternoon, doctors at a clinic in Bir Muammar, about six miles from the front lines, said three rebels had been killed in the day’s fighting, a much lower tally than in previous days. Wooden coffins were strewn on the lawn outside the clinic, including one big enough only for an infant.
Wounded men were brought in by ambulance and in private cars, a doctor said, including one who was shot in the jaw and had lost his tongue.
The Associated Press, quoting a rebel commander in Zawiyah, said 100 Qaddafi soldiers remained inside the refinery. The commander, Osama Arusi, said an oil pipeline to Tripoli had been cut off, but his assertion could not be immediately confirmed.
Elsewhere in Zawiyah, government snipers were stationed in tall buildings, including a hospital in the city. The rebels also said they had managed to keep control of a highway connecting Tunisia and Tripoli.
But it was not clear that the rebels could or would halt all traffic to the capital. At the Tunisian border on Tuesday, trucks carrying rice and wheat were preparing to drive to Tripoli. Their drivers said they had received news that there were routes around the fighting.
Source: nytimes.com