"Zero hour" for Gadhafi as besieged Tripoli rises up message, tonight, capital, through, leader

tiffiant

"Zero hour" for Gadhafi as besieged Tripoli rises up



TRIPOLI, Aug 21 (Reuters) - Explosions and gunfire rocked Tripoli through the night as opponents of Muammar Gadhafi rose up in the capital, declaring a final push to topple the Libyan leader after a six-month war reached the city’s outskirts.

A defiant Gadhafi said an assault by "rats" had been repelled.

"Those rats ... were attacked by the masses tonight and we eliminated them," Gadhafi said in an audio message broadcast over state television early on Sunday.

"I know that there are air bombardments but the fireworks were louder than the sound of the bombs thrown by the aircraft."

Intense gunfire erupted after nightfall. Reuters journalists in the centre of the capital said it subsided somewhat after several hours, but bursts of machinegun fire and explosions could still be heard in the pre-dawn hours, indicating fighting in several neighbourhoods.

"The zero hour has started. The rebels in Tripoli have risen up," Abdel Hafiz Ghoga, vice-chairman of the rebel National Transitional Council, based in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi, told Reuters.

Gadhafi’s influential former number two, Abdel Salam Jalloud, who defected to the rebel cause a day earlier, appeared on television in Rome and called on the capital to rise against "the tyrant." "Tonight you claim victory over fear," he said.


The clashes inside the capital triggered massive street celebrations in Benghazi as well as elsewhere in the country and in the capital of neighbouring Tunisia.

Gadhafi’s information minister said the rebel incursion into the city had been quickly put down.

Rebel advances on Tripoli have transformed the war since they seized the city of Zawiyah on Tripoli’s Western outskirts a week ago, cutting the capital off from its main road link to the outside world and putting unprecedented pressure on Gadhafi.

Before dawn, state television showed Gadhafi’s son Saif al-Islam addressing what it called a youth conference. A roomful of supporters broke into occasional chants and applause as he declared that the rebels would be defeated.

tiffiant

"The revolt in Libya will not succeed. You will never see us as Libyans surrender and raise the white flag: that is impossible. This is our country and we will never leave it."

FIGHTING RAGES

Fighting was still raging after midnight around Mitiga airbase in Tripoli’s Tajourah district, an area said to be under rebel control, an opposition activist told a Reuters journalist outside Libya.

The gun battles left a number of rebels dead in the suburb of Qadah and elsewhere, along with at least three pro-Gadhafi soldiers in the Zawiyat al-Dahmania district of Tripoli, he said.

A Tripoli resident told Reuters that Muslim clerics in parts of Tripoli had called on people to rise up, using the loudspeakers on minarets. The resident said the call went out around the time people were breaking their Ramadan fast.

"We can hear shooting in different places," one resident said. "Most of the regions of the city have gone out, mostly young people ... it’s the uprising... They went out after breaking the (Ramadan) fast."

"They are shouting religious slogans: ’God is greatest!’"

Washington says Gadhafi’s days are numbered, and reports have emerged of more defections from his ranks. President Barack Obama, on vacation in Martha’s Vineyard, was receiving regular updates on Libya, a senior White House official said.

"If Tripoli eventually falls to the rebels, Gadhafi’s already limited options become even more limited. Pressure on him and his shrinking circle of loyalists has to be taking a serious toll," a senior White House official said.

Rebels said on Saturday they had thwarted an attempt by Gadhafi’s forces to recapture Zawiyah.

"Gadhafi will try to take back Zawiyah at any price. He will keep shelling the hospital," a rebel fighter said as he prepared for midday prayers in the mosque of Bir Hawisa, a nearby village where many civilians are sheltering. "We will not let that happen. We will fight."

tiffiant

A libyan man holds a firework as tens of thousands of Libyans celebrate what the rebels claim to be the first uprising in Tripoli against the Kadhafi's regime on August 21, 2011 at freedom square in Benghazi, Libya. Several explosions and heavy gunfire were heard late Saturday in Tripoli, as witnesses reported fighting in some neighbourhoods of the Libyan capital. Gunfire erupted in central Tripoli after the break of the dawn-to-dusk fast of Ramadan.