Tripoli Celebrates Regime 'Victories'
Thousands of Libyans celebrated victories over rebel forces claimed by Moammar Gadhafi's regime Sunday in the center of Tripoli with gunfire lasting for hours and hooting of horns.
"We are shooting to celebrate because we are beating al-Qaida. We have won, al-Qaida is gone," one soldier told an AFP correspondent, apparently unaware of rebel denials that key towns had been seized.
Troops and militiamen fired their weapons into the air as some 4,000 to 5,000 people demonstrated in the capital's Green Square in favor of Gadhafi, not worrying about where the bullets might be coming down.
Green flags hung from windows and water, biscuits and portraits of Gadhafi were being handed out, while regime officials encouraged Western journalists to witness the celebrations.
Women and small children carrying pistols were among the demonstrators.
The firing had started around 6:00 am (0400 GMT) and was still going on some four hours later, as state television reported that Gadhafi's forces had recaptured key towns held by the rebels, including the oil port of Ras Lanuf, the third city of Misrata and Tobruk, near the Egyptian border.
But an AFP reporter in Ras Lanuf said the town was still firmly in rebel hands, despite a couple of air strikes by single Libyan warplanes Sunday, and rebel leaders scoffed at the other claims.
"Gadhafi says they took back Ras Lanuf, but we are still here in Ras Lanuf and not only here, but further (west)," Colonel Bashir al-Moghrabi told reporters outside the town's only hotel.
He said rebels were also still in control in Misrata as well as in Zawiyah, west of Tripoli, where fierce battles took place on Saturday.
A member of the rebel-appointed council in Tobruk, Fateh Faraj, contacted by AFP, also said claims that that town had fallen were "not true."
He said the situation was calm and that "absolutely nothing" was happening.
The rebels have vowed to march on Sirte, Gadhafi's home town about 150 kilometers (95 miles) from Bin Jawad, west of Ras Lanuf, where fighting was reported Sunday.
The clashes between the rebels and Gadhafi supporters wounded at least 14 people on Sunday, including a French journalist, in the hamlet of Bin Jawad, medics said.
Doctors rushing the wounded to treatment at Ras Lanuf further east in rebel-held territory said the rebels were ambushed by Gadhafi loyalists hiding in houses in Bin Jawad.
"The militiamen were hiding inside their homes. And they ambushed them," said medic Yusuf Abdul Salam, who brought one man shot in the head to the hospital in Ras Lanuf.
A French journalist shot in the leg, but not thought to be seriously wounded, told AFP he had been driving with rebel fighters towards Bin Jawad when they were attacked.
"We were met with bullets. Two bullets hit my camera. It exploded. I was in a pick-up with the revolutionaries and we were met with bullets," he said.
An AFP correspondent saw 14 people brought into the hospital. Doctor Awad al-Quwaili had initially said nine Libyans were wounded in the clashes.
Bin Jawad was the western-most point that AFP reporters on Saturday were able to confirm a rebel presence in their struggle to overthrow Gadhafi.
"It was the Al-Ihsun tribe. They betrayed us. It was grand treason. They betrayed us for money," Saleh, a medic, told AFP.
Source: Agence France Presse
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