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Pro-democracy forces have fought with troops loyal to Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi for the third straight day in and around the key oil town of Brega, as foreign air strikes continued to rain down on the government's forces.
Hundreds of opposition fighters retreated east of Brega under artillery fire earlier on Sunday before regrouping and firing back with their own rockets. Black smoke rose from the west side of the town, and some fighters suggested that better-trained fighters, possibly defected army troops, were still battling Gaddafi's soldiers inside.
Opposition fighters had managed to advance to a walled university campus near the town's western edge where fighting has swirled since opposition troops first reached the area one month ago. But despite air strikes on Gaddafi's forces that opposition fighters reported hearing on Saturday night, they seemed unable to move further.
"If you compare where we are today to where we were a few weeks ago, then we are in the exact same position," said Al Jazeera's Hoda Abdel-Hamid, reporting from Ajdabiya.
The opposition fighters seem able to advance only when Gaddafi's forces pull out, she said, though the opposition claims it is still trying to bring order to its nascent army.
Doctors at Ajdabiya's main hospital told Al Jazeera that four people had been killed and nine others wounded on Sunday.
Elsewhere, Abdel Ati al-Obeidi, a Libyan deputy foreign minister, left the country bound for Greece, bearing a message to the Greek government from Gaddafi.
Also on Sunday, the British foreign office confirmed that a delegation led by Christopher Prentice, the British ambassador to Rome, had arrived in Benghazi and would hold talks with the opposition's Transition National Council.
Misurata endures more shelling
Meanwhile, a Turkish ferry rescued more than 250 people injured in the recent fighting in the besieged town of Misurata.
The hospital vessel, called the Ankara, had arrived under escort from two Turkish navy frigates and 10 air force F-16s. Officials have said that some of the injured need extensive treatment and will be flown to Turkey for assistance.
Swathed in bandages, evacuees on board gave one of the most detailed accounts yet of conditions in the last major opposition-held city in western Libya.
"It is very, very bad. In my street, Gaddafi bombed us," said Ibrahim al-Aradi, 26. "We have no water, no electricity. We don't have medicine. There are snipers everywhere," he told the Reuters news agency.
Others spoke of Gaddafi's forces bombing mosques and houses.
Hamen, a Libyan doctor who was accompanying the men, told Reuters: "Misurata is terrible. I have seen terrible things. Thirty people killed in one day. These are my patients. I must stay with them but I want to go back."
Gaddafi's troops continued to attack Misurata on Sunday. A mortar attack in the city killed at least one person and wounded several others.
Two mortar shells hit a building that had previously been used to treat the wounded, though patients and medical staff had already left days ago.
Ambulances carried the wounded to a new building being used as a makeshift hospital, a witness told Reuters after the shelling.
A man named Ayman who said he was a doctor in Misurata told BBC Radio that the new clinic was overwhelmed.
Doctors say more than 240 people have been killed and over 1,000 wounded in Misurata in the last month alone, as a counter-offensive by Gaddafi's troops raised the number of casualties.
The city of Az-Zintan also came under fire from Gaddafi's tanks on Sunday, a resident told Reuters. In Yagran, a nearby mountain town, residents say Gaddafi's forces have surrounded the town and are arresting people.
US scales down military effort
The stalled opposition advance in the east has managed to survive through the intervention of an international military coalition assembled to enforce a UN Security Council resolution, passed in March, aimed at 'protecting Libyan civilians'.
This weekend marked a deadline for US forces to begin their anticipated withdrawal from the battlefield.
However, on Sunday, the Pentagon confirmed to Al Jazeera that the US had agreed to NATO's request for a 48-hour extension of American participation in the coalition air strikes.
After hundreds of air strikes and Tomahawk cruise missile attacks, NATO allies were now expected to take the lead in bombing Gaddafi's forces.
American administration officials had said they intended all along to take a back seat in the coalition efforts, and had earlier said that as of Sunday, US aircraft would not strike targets in Libya unless requested by NATO and approved in Washington DC.
Al Jazeera's John Terret, reporting from Washington DC, said the US was always going to be on standby to step in if and when NATO required. "But clearly that request has come far sooner than the US was probably expecting," he said.
PHOTO CAPTION
Libyan revolution fighters are seen near the strategic oil town of Brega, some 800 kilometers (500 miles) east of the capital Tripoli on April 2, 2011.
Al-Jazeera
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