National Transitional Council forces pulled back under ferocious fire from Muammar Gaddafi loyalists in the fugitive strongman's hometown Sirte on Thursday, an AFP correspondent reported.
The NTC forces, which had been hoping to mop up the last pockets of resistance in two residential neighbourhoods in the northwest of the city, withdrew at least two kilometres (more than a mile) to the central police headquarters they captured on Tuesday, the correspondent said.
“We have been told to retreat to the police HQ and will be using artillery cannon to hit Gaddafi's forces,” fighter Hamid Neji of the Martys of Free Libya Brigade told AFP on the new front line.
Before the reverse, a field commander of the brigade had told AFP that its fighters were trying to avoid using heavy weaponry against the Dollar and Number Two residential neighbourhoods to avoid civilian casualties.
“We are not going very aggressively into these neighbourhoods because there are still families inside them,” commander Yahya al-Moghasabi said. “We believe it will take another three days to capture them,” he had added. - Sapa-AFP