TRIPOLI, Aug 25 (Reuters) – Rebels seeking to quell the last redoubts of Muammar Gaddafi’s loyalists have zeroed in on two cities, one his coastal birthplace and the other deep in Libya’s oil-producing desert, that he has turned into a shrine to his cultish strongman rule.
Bristling with Gaddafi props like a huge marble-lined hall where he hosted diplomatic summits and billboards trumpeting his “state of the masses”, Sirte and Sabha loomed as the last pockets of resistance to the Brother Leader’s ouster.
After overrunning the capital Tripoli in lightning fashion earlier this week, rebels moved in on Sabha 600 km (400 miles) to the south and Sirte 450 km (280 miles) to the east in a two-pronged pincer attack, triggering heavy fighting on Thursday.
Even if both fall to the insurgents soon, vast expanses of Libya’s interior desert will remain outside rebel control, areas where tribes either pro-Gaddafi or historically hostile to central government have long held sway.
Still, rebel takeovers of Sirte and Sabha would deal a symbolically resonant coup de grace to the 42-year Gaddafi era.
That’s because Sirte evoked his pretensions to revolutionary world statesmanship and Sabha his maverick “Brother Leader” mode of rule and the huge oil bounty that underpinned it. Continued…