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Troops loyal to longtime Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi have capitalized on an apparent slowdown in the frequency of coalition air strikes in the east and have pushed back opposition fighters, threatening a standoff.
Regime forces shelled opposition fighters with mortars and Grad rockets on Tuesday, forcing them to retreat from Bin Jawad, a small town around 150 kilometers east of Sirte, Gaddafi's reportedly well-defended home town.
Several explosions were also heard in the capital, Tripoli, on Tuesday, but it was unclear where exactly they occurred.
The Pentagon said that international forces had launched 22 Tomahawk cruise missiles and flew 115 strike sorties over Libya between Monday and Tuesday.
A rapid advance, reversed
The reversal for Libya's nascent opposition came after their forces had made a speedy, two-day advance from Ajdabiya under the protection of international air cover.
The fighters had advanced 20 kilometers beyond Bin Jawad on Monday, reaching the village of Nawfaliya before meeting stiff resistance. After the shelling on Tuesday, they fell back to Ras Lanuf, a major coastal oil facility, and beyond.
"At the moment, I think we even risk having a standoff at Ras Lanuf," said Al Jazeera's Sue Turton, reporting from Benghazi on Wednesday. "There is no way they are going to be able to push back unless they bring in more air strikes."
Opposition fighters in the western town of Misurata have also come under renewed attack from pro-Gaddafi forces, an opposition spokesman there said on Tuesday.
He said eight civilians had died that day and described the humanitarian situation in Misurata as "catastrophic," with water and electricity cut off and residents running short of essential supplies, including medicines.
For 10 days, an international coalition including forces from France, the United Kingdom, the United States and Qatar has been patrolling the skies and pounding Gaddafi's troops and facilities on the ground in order to enforce a UN Security Council resolution aimed at protecting Libyan civilians.
The military campaign opened a path for the fighters to advance out of Benghazi, the opposition's eastern stronghold, which Gaddafi's troops had threatened to overrun on March 19.
If the regime troops continue to advance east down the main coastal road toward Ajdabiya, an important crossroads and the last major town before Benghazi, they could expose themselves to coalition jets, who could "pick off tanks" as they have done before, Turton said.
But on Wednesday, control of the no-fly and "no-drive" zone is set to pass into NATO hands after days of slow negotiations during which Turkey - a NATO member - reportedly raised objections to the aggressive coalition ground attacks.
It remains to be seen whether the switch in command will involve a shift in tactics away from the intensive ground attacks that drove Gaddafi's tank columns back from Benghazi and, the opposition fighters say, saved the city from a massacre.
Arming the opposition fighters
The stall in the opposition advance has raised questions about the need to supply the opposition with weapons. For the past two days, untrained opposition fighters have been powerless to stand against the bombardment from regime troops.
"They have nothing like the weight of firepower that Gaddafi's forces have," Turton said.
During a 40-nation conference on Libya held in London on Tuesday, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton left the door open to arming the opposition.
"It is our interpretation that [Security Council] resolution 1973 amended or overrode the absolute prohibition [on providing] arms to anyone in Libya," Clinton said. "So there could be a legitimate transfer of arms, if a country were to choose to do that."
In an interview with NBC News Barack Obama, the US president, also refused to rule out the possibility.
"I'm not ruling it out," Obama said. "But I'm also not ruling it in. We're still making an assessment partly about what Gaddafi's forces are going to be doing."
PHOTO CAPTION
Libyan revolution fighters pray on the frontline outside of Bin Jawaad, 150 km east of Sirte, central Libya, Tuesday, March 29, 2011.
Al-Jazeera
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