Fighting grips Misrata after Libya regime ‘ultimatum’

We’re overwhelmed, overwhelmed. We lack everything: personnel, equipment and medicines,’ he said.
Ambulances pulled up outside the hospital every three or four minutes, also bringing in wounded soldiers loyal to Gaddafi, as paramedics frantically wiped blood off stretchers.Misrata has been the scene of deadly urban guerrilla fighting between pro-Gaddafi forces and outgunned rebels for more than six weeks.Saturday’s upsurge in the fight for the port city came after Gaddafi’s government said it had given its army an ‘ultimatum’ to stop the rebellion in the city, 200 kilometres east of the capital.The deputy foreign minister, Khaled Kaim said: ‘There was an ultimatum to the Libyan army: if they cannot solve the problem in Misrata, then the people from (the neighbouring towns of) Zliten, Tarhuna, Bani Walid and Tawargha will move in and they will talk to the rebels.‘If they don’t surrender, then they will engage them in a fight,’ he told journalists.
Hamed al-Hasi, a colonel coordinating rebel fighters at the western gate of the crossroads town of Ajdabiya in the east, said the decision meant the insurgents were beginning to win the war.This is the first nail in the coffin of Gaddafi. This means the Libyan army is no longer capable,’ he said.The United States carried out its first Predator drone strike in Libya in the early afternoon on Saturday, the Pentagon said, declining to give details on the targets or location.Earlier, NATO strikes hit a patch of bare ground opposite Gaddafi’s Bab al-Aziziya residence in central Tripoli, and what looked like a bunker.Authorities who took foreign correspondents there said they were ‘a parking lot’ and ‘sewers.’Anti-aircraft fire rang out as ambulance sirens wailed.Allibya television said the capital was ‘now the target of raids by the barbaric crusader colonialist aggressor,’ a term the Gaddafi regime uses for Western forces.The official JANA news agency reported two people died in NATO raids late Friday on the Zintan region southwest of Tripoli where stepped up fighting has taken place with rebels who hold several towns.NATO warplanes continued to overfly Tripoli on Saturday.Kaim accused Washington of ‘new crimes against humanity’ after the US president, Barack Obama, authorised deployment of missile-carrying drone warplanes over Libya for what his administration called ‘humanitarian’ reasons.He also hit out at a senior US senator’s visit to Benghazi, the rebel capital in the east, saying the Transitional National Council did not represent Libyans and had ‘no authority on the ground.’
Rebels bogged down in their bid to oust Gaddafi hailed the US decision to deploy armed drones over Libya.

Rebels have complained civilians are being killed in places such as Misrata, where entire streets have been pulverised by gunfire, shelling and cluster bombs.France, Italy and Britain have said they would send military personnel to eastern Libya, but only to advise the rebels on technical, logistical and organisational matters and not to engage in combat.The French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, has signalled his intent to follow in US Senator McCain’s footsteps and visit Benghazi.On the humanitarian front, the Red Cross warned the situation in Misrata could ‘rapidly deteriorate further and the lack of basic services such as water, electricity, food and medical care could turn critical.’And on Saturday, an aid ship delivered 160 tonnes of food and medicine to the port city before it evacuates around 1,000 stranded refugees, mostly Nigerians.Hundreds of Libyan families lined up along the harbour front in hope of getting on board the vessel chartered by the International Organisation for Migration, which has already transported 3,100 refugees from 21 countries out of the besieged city. But Dakir Hussam, a Syrian electrician, expressed his delight at managing to get a place on the Red Star One after witnessing violent clashes.The UN refugee agency says about 15,000 people fled fighting in western Libya into Tunisia in the past two weeks and a much larger exodus was feared.Massive Libyan protests in February — inspired by the revolts that toppled long-time autocrats in Egypt and Tunisia escalated into war when Gaddafi’s troops fired on demonstrators and protesters seized several eastern towns.