Tripoli, February Several towns in western Libya have been taken by opposition forces, which are now preparing to march on the capital, a member of a revolutionary committee says.
An Media reporter arriving in Nalut, a town of 66,000 people 235km west of Tripoli, found that strongman Muammar Gaddafi’s loyalist security forces had entirely disappeared from the streets.
“The city has been liberated since February 19. It has been run by a revolutionary committe named by the town’s communities,” local lawyer and committee member Shaban Abu Sitta said today.
“The towns of Rhibat, Kabaw, Jado, Rogban, Zentan, Yefren, Kekla, Gherien and Hawamed have also been free for days. In all these towns, Gaddafi’s forces have gone and a revolutionary committee put in place,” he said.
“We have placed ourselves under the authority of the interim government in Benghazi,” he explained, referring to the opposition shadow regime formed by former justice minister Mustafa Abdel Jalil in the east of the country.
“Along with all the free towns on the mountain of Djebel Nafusa and those on the other side of the mountain, we are preparing forces to march on Tripoli and liberate the capital from Gaddafi’s yoke,” Abu Sitta said.
The AFP journalists travelled to Nalut from the Tunisian border, 60km away, among the first Western reporters to cross Libya’s western frontier since the uprising against Gaddafi began.
Confirmation that western Libya is also slipping from the veteran leader’s grasp came as the protest leaders that have driven his forces from the east of the country established a transitional “national council”.
——–Agencies