Libyan rebels push towards Tripoli

Libyan rebels battled their way closer to Tripoli on Sunday to help fighters inside the city who rose up overnight declaring a final showdown with Muammar Gaddafi. The Libyan leader dismissed the rebels as "rats" and said he would not yield. But his grip on power looked more fragile than ever after rebels, fighting for the past six months to end his rule, advanced to within about 25 km (16 miles) of Tripoli's western edge.

"We're going to Tripoli now," said Moussa, a rebel fighter raised in the United States, near the front line in the village of Al-Maya.

As he spoke, rebel pick-up trucks and a tank trundled down the highway which traces the Mediterranean coast towards Tripoli. Anti-aircraft guns, adapted by the rebels to shoot targets on the ground, pounded away nearby.

In a coordinated revolt that rebel cells had been secretly preparing for months, shooting started on Saturday night across Tripoli, moments after Muslim clerics, using the loudspeakers on mosque minarets, called people on to the streets.

The fighting inside Tripoli, combined with rebel advances to the outskirts of the city, appeared to signal the decisive phase in a six month conflict that has become the bloodiest of the "Arab Spring" uprisings and embroiled NATO powers.

"Gaddafi's chances for a safe exit are diminishing by the hour," said Ashour Shamis, a Libyan opposition activist and editor based in Britain.

But Gaddafi's fall is far from certain. His security forces did not buckle, and the city is much bigger than anything the mostly amateur anti-Gaddafi fighters, with their scavenged weapons and mismatched uniforms, have ever tackled.

If the Libyan leader is forced from power, there are question marks over whether the opposition can restore stability in this oil exporting country. Reuters