Reply #7: Free Libya fighters inching steadily towards Sirte [View All]

[pinboy3niner]

Reporting from Ajdabiya, Al Jazeera's Hoda Abdel Hamid said:

The fighters have been steadily, but slowly, inching towards Sirte. ... You get the feeling that effectively they're putting Sirte under blockade. It is a very tough fight at the moment, simply because they are now going through villages and towns that don't necessarily support the fighters.

We keep on fighting them...as they advance, and all what we see are empty villages. We did ask: 'Where are the civilians?' We were told the Civilians had fled in the desert. some of the rebels say that's because they are pro-Gaddafi and they consider them, really, as betrayers.

We know that the international Red Cross has been reaching out to those civilians. And those civilians say that they don't trust coming back to their villages even if there's no sound of gunfire or explosions around them. They simply don't trust what could happen to them.

It (the need for national reconciliation) is something we certainly felt over the past three weeks as we were pushing with the rebels. There are tribal divisions. There are social divisions. And the NTC really needs to tackle that as quickly as possible.

http://blogs.aljazeera.net/liveblog/libya-sep-15-2011-1325