Libyan Revolutionary fighters take Sirt university

Libyan revolutionary fighters have gained control over the University of Sirt as the battle for control over the fugitive dictator Muammar Gaddafi’s hometown continues.
Forces of Libya’s new regime on Sunday tightened their stranglehold on Moamer Gaddafi’s hometown Sirte, seizing its university and edging closer to his diehards holed up in a conference centre.

Fighting has been raging around Sirte’s university and the nearby Ouagadougou conference centre since the Libyan revolutionary fighters launched on Friday what they are calling their final assault on the coastal city.

“The fighting has been difficult; there were a lot of snipers,” NTC commander Nasser Zamud said of the assault on the university in the Mediterranean city’s southeast.

On Sunday morning, Libyan revolutionary fighters were able to enter the university and its new campus, a huge construction site where Gaddafi snipers had been picking them off from unfinished buildings.

“The ferocity of the Gaddafi forces’ resistance in Sirte and their other main bastion, Bani Walid, has surprised the new regime,” with NTC chief Mustafa Abdel Jalil admitting the battle was “very vicious.”

“Our fighters today still have to deal with snipers in high positions,” he told a joint news conference in Tripoli late Saturday with visiting British Defense Secretary Liam Fox and Italian counterpart Ignazio La Russa.

Medics said six NTC fighters were killed and 99 wounded on Saturday, taking the toll to 23 dead and almost 330 wounded since they launched what they are calling their final assault on the Gaddafi bastion.

Thousands of civilians are still trapped in the former Libyan leader’s birthplace, and NTC commanders said they were pacing their advance to evacuate some of those who had not fled and to avoid losses from friendly fire.

Forces from Libya’s interim regime scored another strategic goal on Saturday, seizing a four-lane avenue which opens the way to a final assault on a key base of Gaddafi’s troops, and detaining Gaddafi’s nephew, media sources reported Sunday.

On the western front, fighting concentrated on the so-called 700-house complex where NTC forces fired RPGs and machineguns while Gaddafi loyalists used snipers and mortars.

The gains inside Sirte are seen as crucial by the NTC, which is awaiting the city’s capture to declare the liberation of the whole of Libya, clearing the way to draw up a timetable for elections.

The council has ruled most of the oil-rich country since its forces overran Tripoli on August 23, forcing Gaddafi and his inner circle on the run.

NTC commanders believe that one of Gaddafi’s sons, Mutassim, is holed up in Sirte and that another, Seif al-Islam, once seen as the former strongman’s successor, is hiding in Bani Walid, possibly with his father.