Fighters of Libya’s new rulers enter Sirte from the east

Rebel fighters fire 130 Howitzers at pro-Gaddafi forces near east of Sirte Fighters of Libya’s new rulers have penetrated the eastern gate of Sirte, the hometown of Muammar Qaddafi, after entering it without any resistance from the former strongman’s forces, a commander told AFP Friday. “Our fighters are in control of the eastern gate of Sirte,” Commander Ahmed Zlitni from the operations centre told AFP. “They are two kilometers (1.2 miles) ahead of the gate and holding positions there. Technically we can say that we entered Sirte from the east,” Zlitni said, adding that the fighters “did not face any resistance” when they crossed the gate.
Fighter Muatiz Saad, deployed near the town of Sultana, 30 kilometers (19 miles) east of Sirte, also told AFP that a large number of his comrades had entered Sirte from the eastern gate.
“I was at the frontline and I came to know that our troops have entered Sirte from the eastern gate,” he told AFP at one of their bases near the town of Harawa, around 40 kilometers east of Sirte.
Earlier this week the fighters of the National Transitional Council, Libya’s new ruling body, faced stiff resistance around six kilometers ahead of the town of Sultana from loyalists of Qaddafi.
For the past four days they had been unable to push ahead and from early Thursday there was also a drop in fighting after they faced shortages of ammunition.

A captured general loyal to Muammar Gaddafi has said the fugitive Libyan leader was secretly moving around in the southern desert, a commander of the new regime told the AFP news agency on Friday. "General Belgasem al-Abaaj, who we captured on Monday, said that Gaddafi had contacted him by phone about 10 days ago, and that he was moving secretly between (the oasis town of) Sabha and Ghat" on the Algerian border, said Mohammed Barka Wardugu. Abaaj had said that Gaddafi "is helped by Nigerian and Chadian mercenaries who know the desert routes," added Wardugu, spokesperson for the Desert Shield Brigade attached to the National Transitional Council (NTC).
The general was Gaddafi's intelligence chief in the southern Khufra region, where he was wanted by the NTC for many crimes, Wardugu said. "I think Gaddafi is hiding in the Sahara region between Libya and Algeria," he said, adding that dozens of dozens of mercenaries and soldiers loyal to Gaddafi had been arrested in the south.
"We have arrested 18 Gaddafi soldiers, 300 Chadian mercenaries and today we caught 60 people of different nationalities (Sudanese, Somalis and Eritreans) in the vicinity of Zouila" southeast of Sabha, Wardugu said.
He said the region was calm following the capture of Sabha on Wednesday. Regarding the existence of concentrated uranium or yellow cake in the Sabha area, Wardugu said its existence had been known "for a long time." "For many years, we knew that there were biological or radioactive materials stored in a military centre in the northeast of Sabha airport. "We had talked to the Gaddafi regime about the danger to civilians. But they never did anything for the people of the south."
The UN atomic agency confirmed the existence of yellow cake in Libya after US news channel CNN reported that new regime forces had found potentially radioactive material, AFP reported.

Baghdadi al-Mahmoudi, who served as Libya's prime minister under Muammar Gaddafi, has been arrested in Tunisia and sentenced to six months in jail for illegally entering the country, a Tunisian justice ministry spokesman told AFP on Thuursday. Baghdadi, who was arrested on Wednesday, "appeared before the state prosecutor in Tozeur (430 kilometres, 270 miles south of Tunis) and sentenced to six months in prison with immediate effect," Kadhem Zine el Abidine said.