Rebels near Gadhafi hometown

Associated Press

BIN JAWWAD, Libya

Rebel forces bore down Monday on Moammar Gadhafi’s hometown of Sirte, a key government stronghold where a brigade headed by one of the Libyan leader’s sons was digging in to defend the city and setting the stage for a bloody and possibly decisive battle.

The opposition made new headway in its rapid advance westward through oil towns and along stretches of empty desert highway toward Sirte and beyond to the big prize — the capital, Tripoli.

But the rebels remain woefully outgunned by Gadhafi’s forces, who swept the insurgents from positions in eastern Libya until the international intervention forced government troops to withdraw.

Rebels acknowledged they could not have held their ground without international air and cruise missile strikes. Libya state television reported new NATO airstrikes after nightfall, targeting “military and civilian targets” in the cities of Garyan and Mizda about 40 miles and 90 miles respectively from Tripoli.

Speaking in Washington, President Barack Obama declared that the goal of the mission was not to depose Gadhafi, calling that a mistake. He said he would work to replace Gadhafi by “non-military means.” He did not elaborate.

Instead, he said, the U.S and its allies moved fast to protect Libya’s civilians from imminent massacres by Gadhafi’s forces, “and as president, I refused to wait for the images of slaughter and mass graves before taking action.”

NATO insisted that it was seeking only to protect civilians and not to give air cover to an opposition march. But that line looked set to become even more blurred. The airstrikes clearly are enabling rebels bent on overthrowing Gadhafi to push toward the final line of defense on the road to the capital.

Vice Adm. William Gortney, staff director for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the U.S. was hitting Libyan targets with Thunderbolts and AC-130 gunships, aircraft that can fly low enough to support ground operations.

There was growing criticism from Russia and other countries that the international air campaign is overstepping the bounds of the U.N. resolution that authorized it. The complaints came at a critical transition in the campaign from a U.S. to a NATO command. That threatens to hamper the operation, as some of the 28 NATO member nations plan to limit their participation to air patrols, rather than attacks on ground targets.

On Monday, rebel fighters moved about 70 miles west Monday from the coastal oil terminal and town of Ras Lanouf to just beyond the small town of Bin Jawwad, where their push was halted by government fire along the exposed desert highway and the heavily mined entrance to Sirte.

The rebels are just 60 miles from Sirte, the bastion of Gadhafi’s power in the center of the country.

Take control of that, and there’s only the largely rebel-held city of Misrata — and then empty desert — in the way of the capital. Sirte could therefore see some of the fiercest fighting of the rebellion, which began Feb. 15.