A spokesman in Benghazi said rebels based in east Libya had captured Sirte on Monday, but a Reuters correspondent in the city said there was no sign that rebel forces were in control.
“We heard from Benghazi that the rebels are in Sirte, but it is not for sure because Qaddafi’s soldiers are firing rockets from Sirte, so we are not certain,” 23-year-old Mohamed, a lawyer turned rebel fighter, said in the town of Ras Lanuf.
Rebels were lining up for petrol in the town before heading west in dozens of pick-ups.
Emboldened by Western-led air strikes against Qaddafi’s forces, rebels in the oil-producing North African country have pushed west along the Mediterranean coast to retake a series of towns in short order.
Reversing earlier losses in a back-and-forth five-week insurgency, they have regained control of all the main oil terminals in eastern Libya, at Es Sider, Ras Lanuf, Brega, Zueitina and Tobruk.
Al Jazeera reported that the advancing rebels had taken control of the town of Nawfaliyah, about 120 km (75 miles) from Sirte.
Contradicting the rebel claim to have captured Sirte itself, Reuters correspondent Michael Georgy reported from the city that the situation was normal. He had seen some police and military, but no signs of any fighting.
As Qaddafi’s birthplace and an important military base, Sirte — about half-way along the coast from the rebel stronghold of Benghazi to Tripoli — has great symbolic and strategic value.. If it fell, the rebels would gain a great psychological boost and the road toward the capital would lie open.
Georgy heard four blasts on Sunday night but it was unclear if they were in Sirte or its outskirts.
He also saw a convoy of 20 military vehicles, including truck-mounted anti-aircraft guns, leaving Sirte and moving westwards toward Tripoli, along with dozens of civilian cars carrying families and stuffed with personal belongings.
“We want to go to Sirte today. I don’t know if it will happen,” said 25-year-old rebel fighter Marjai Agouri as he waited with 100 others outside Bin Jawad with three multiple rocket launchers, six anti-aircraft guns and around a dozen pick-up trucks with machineguns mounted on them.
The advance by the poorly armed and uncoordinated force of volunteer rebels suggested that Western air strikes were shifting the battlefield dynamics dramatically in the east.
Qaddafi, fighting the uprising against his 41-year rule, appears to be retrenching in the west, where his forces fought rebels on Sunday in the center of Misrata, Libya’s third city.
A rebel spokesman in another western town, Zintan, said forces loyal to Qaddafi bombarded the town with rockets early on Monday, Al Jazeera television reported.
Libya’s state news agency Jana said Western forces bombed the southern city of Sabha at dawn on Monday, leading to several casualties.
The Western-led military intervention began on March 19, two days after the United Nations Security Council authorized “all necessary measures” to protect civilians from Qaddafi’s forces.
Since the outset, the mission has faced questions from critics about its scope and aims, including the extent to which it will actively back the rebel side and whether it might target Qaddafi himself.
Russia, which abstained in the March 17 UN vote, said on Monday that Western attacks on Qaddafi’s forces amounted to taking sides with the rebels.
“We consider that intervention by the coalition in what is essentially an internal civil war is not sanctioned by the UN Security Council resolution,” Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told a news conference.
But NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen told the BBC: “We are there to protect civilians — no more, no less.”
Echoing an earlier move by France, the Gulf state of Qatar recognized the rebel Libyan National Council as the sole legitimate representative of the Libyan people, the state news agency reported on Monday. Qatar has already contributed two warplanes to the Western-led alliance.
Britain’s Guardian newspaper quoted Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan as saying his country was ready to act as mediator and broker an early cease-fire.
Erdogan said if the parties to the conflict requested Turkey to mediate, “we will take steps to do that” within the framework of NATO, the Arab League and the African Union.
At least six blasts resonated in Tripoli on Sunday night, followed by long bursts of anti-aircraft fire by Libyan forces. Libyan television said there had been air strikes on the “civilian and military areas” in the capital.
Libyan state TV broadcast what it said was live footage of Qaddafi in a car in his Tripoli compound where hundreds of supporters waved green flags and chanted slogans. Qaddafi could not be seen in the white car but the TV said he was in it.
On Sunday, NATO agreed to take full command of military operations in Libya after a week of heated negotiations, officials said. The United States, which led the initial phase, had sought to scale back its role in another Muslim country after the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
US Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Western air strikes had “eliminated” Qaddafi’s ability to move his heavy weapons.
Gates also raised the possibility that Qaddafi’s government could splinter and said an international conference in London on Tuesday would discuss political strategies to help bring an end to Qaddafi’s rule.
Libya accused NATO of “terrorizing” and killing its people as part of a global plot to humiliate and weaken the North African country.
The government says Western-led air attacks have killed more than 100 civilians, a charge denied by the coalition which says it is protecting civilians from Qaddafi’s forces and targeting only military sites to enforce the no-fly zone.
“The terror people live in, the fear, the tension is everywhere. And these are civilians who are being terrorized every day,” said Mussa Ibrahim, a Libyan government spokesman.
“We believe the unnecessary continuation of the air strikes is a plan to put the Libyan government in a weak negotiating position. NATO is prepared to kill people, destroy army training camps and army checkpoints and other locations.”
