Fighting spilled onto Tunisian territory at the Dehiba-Wazin border crossing, in what appeared to be part of a broader government move to root out fighters' outposts beyond their eastern heartland. But Qaddafi’s soldiers apologized to their Tunisian counterparts for the incursion and returned to their posts.
Fighters said the western mountain town of Zintan also came under fire from multiple-launch Grad rockets seen as especially hazardous to civilian areas because of their inaccuracy.
Libyan freedom fighters captured the Dehiba-Wazin border crossing into Tunisia a week ago and expanded their control to about 10 km inside Libya. The counter-attack began with shelling of retreating pro-democracy fighters.
“Fighting broke out on Tunisian territory, in Dehiba, after Qaddafi’s forces attacked the border crossing,” said Ali, a Tunisian involved in helping Libyans arriving in Dehiba. “The fighters have withdrawn and are now inside Tunisia.” Seizing the border crossing cut off opposition fighters in the Western Mountains from their only road to the outside world, making them rely on tracks for supplies of food, fuel and medicine. Libyan soldiers hoisted their flag at the border, tearing down a pre-Qaddafi era flag that had fluttered for a few days. There was no official word from Tunis on the incursion. Libyan state television said some fighters had been killed and others taken prisoner in the recapture of the border post.
After weeks of advances and retreats by opposition and government forces along the Mediterranean coast, fighting has settled into a pattern of clashes and skirmishes, with Qaddafi seeking to root out opposition outposts as he fights to prolong his more than four-decade rule over the oil-producing nation.
Qaddafi forces also took a town in the remote southeastern desert, state television reported. “Libyan forces have seized full control of the town of Kufra and purified it of the armed gangs,” it quoted a military spokesman as saying.
But resistance fighters in their Benghazi stronghold denied the town had fallen. “Qaddafi’s forces have been shelling Kufra since this morning and in the afternoon they entered the town. But they are not in full control. The battle is not over and the situation is unclear,” said their spokesman Mohamed Al-Muntasser. Three people died in the shelling of Kufra, the pro-democracy Brnieq newspaper website said. In the Western Mountains, Zintan came under heavy fire for a second day from Russian-made missiles.
Meanwhile, a NATO airstrike killed 12 freedom fighters in the besieged city of Misrata in the latest friendly fire incident in Libya’s chaotic battlefield, a doctor in the city said Thursday.
The airstrike was on Wednesday, the second day of intense fighting around Misrata’s Mediterranean port — the city’s only lifeline to the outside world. A steady stream of boats have been bringing in humanitarian aid through the port and ferrying out hundreds of wounded civilians and foreign migrant workers who were trapped when the fighting broke out two months ago.
Dr. Hassan Malitan said he believed the attack was a mistake but insisted it was caused by NATO aircraft. He said the attack came moments after he and another doctor visited a site where fighters were holed up in a building about five km east of the port.
“We drove about 200 meters and we heard a huge explosion that shook the earth,” Malitan said. He said he looked back and saw smoke rising from where they had just sat with the men. As he and the other doctor began slowly driving back toward the building, a second missile crashed into it, Malitan said.
“We started crying and screaming out their names,” he said. “It was clear that the missiles came from the sky and we heard the airplane.”
