Loyalists fight back; $1.7-M reward offered for Gaddafi

TRIPOLI - Fighting raged Wednesday as Muamar Gaddafi's troops fought back near his Tripoli compound a day after it was captured, while rebels offered a $1.7-million reward for the elusive strongman, dead or alive.

Meanwhile, international backers of the insurgency were moving to free up billions of dollars in frozen assets for them.

And a group of 30 mostly foreign journalists who had been confined to Tripoli's Rixos Hotel were freed.

Thick smoke hung over the Bab al-Aziziya complex, where rebels and Gaddafi forces were fighting in the afternoon with light arms, heavy machine guns, rocket propelled grenades and mortars, an Agence France-Presse reporter said.

Fighting also spread to the nearby Abu Slim area, where loyalists were on the attack, in marked contrast to Tuesday's battle for Bab al-Aziziya when they fled as the rebels breached the gates.

However, rebel commanders said they were determined to push the loyalist troops out of the area, which houses the Rixos Hotel, where around 30 foreign journalists remain trapped in precarious conditions.

Many streets were deserted, with commanders saying dozens of pro-Gaddafi snipers had taken up positions.

"There are snipers above and around the perimeter of Bab al-Aziziya; there are dozens of them but we don't know where they are," said a rebel chief, Nuri Mohammed.

Two powerful blasts thought to be caused by an air strike rocked the capital early Wednesday as a NATO war plane flew overhead.

A rebel military spokesman speaking to Al-Jazeera television said "Libyan territory is 90 to 95 percent under the control of the rebellion."

Colonel Abdullah Abu Afra said, "the fall of Bab al-Aziziyah marked the end of the Gaddafi regime in Tripoli and in Libya."

Gaddafi whereabouts a mystery

The whereabouts of Gaddafi and his family remains a mystery, but the former colonel broadcast a message in which he said his withdrawal from Bab al-Aziziya had been a tactical retreat.

Rebels said they had found no trace of Gaddafi when they swarmed through his compound on Tuesday.

In a speech carried early Wednesday by the website of a TV station headed by his son, Seif al-Islam, Gaddafi said he had abandoned his compound in a "tactical withdrawal" after it had been wrecked by NATO warplanes.

"Bab al-Aziziya was nothing but a heap of rubble after it was the target of 64 NATO missiles and we withdrew from it for tactical reasons," he said.

In a later audio message on Syria-based Arrai Oruba television, Gaddafi boasted that he had taken to the streets of Tripoli without being recognized.

"I walked incognito, without anyone seeing me, and I saw youths ready to defend their city," he said, without specifying when he did his walkabout.

He also urged "the residents, the tribes, the elderly to go into the streets ... and cleanse Tripoli of rats" -- referring to the rebels.

$1.7-million reward

Wherever he may be, the rebel National Transitional Council wants him, dead or alive, and has put a $1.7-million (1.2-million euro) price on his head.

"The NTC supports the initiative of businessmen who are offering two million dinars for the capture of Moamer Gaddafi, dead or alive," NTC chief Mustafa Abdel Jalil said in Benghazi.

Abdel Jalil also offered amnesty to "members of (Gaddafi's) close circle who kill him or capture him."

A spokesman for Gaddafi said the Libyan leader was ready to resist the rebels for months, or even years.

Mussa Ibrahim told Arrai Oruba that more than 6,500 "volunteers" had arrived in Tripoli to fight for the regime, and called for more.

Continue reading at interaksyon