Rebels say Tripoli encircled; Gaddafi defiant
ZAWIYAH, Libya | Mon Aug 15, 2011 6:41pm EDT Aug 15 (Reuters) - Libyan rebels said
on Monday they had seized a second
strategic town near Tripoli within 24
hours, completing the encirclement of
the capital in the boldest advances of
their six-month-old uprising against Muammar Gaddafi. In a barely audible telephone call to
state television overnight, a defiant
and apparently isolated Gaddafi called
on his followers to fight rebels he
referred to as "rats." Gaddafi's forces fired mortars and
rockets at the coastal town of Zawiyah
a day after rebels captured its center in
a thrust that severed the vital coastal
highway from Tripoli to the Tunisian
border, a potential turning point in the war. Rebels said they captured the town of
Garyan south of Tripoli on Monday.
That could not be immediately verified,
but if true it would cut off the other
main route to the capital. "Garyan is fully in the hands of the
revolutionaries," a rebel spokesman,
Abdulrahman, said by telephone. "Gaddafi has been isolated. He has
been cut off from the outside world." Government spokesman Moussa
Ibrahim acknowledged in remarks
broadcast on state television that rebel
fighters were in Garyan. "There are still
armed gangs inside the city. We are
able to drive them out," he said. A U.N. envoy arrived in neighboring Tunisia, where sources say rebels and representatives of the government
have been holed up on the island
resort of Djerba for negotiations. The envoy, Abdel Elah al-Khatib, told Reuters he would meet "Libyan personalities residing in Tunisia" to discuss the conflict.
