Benghazi, Sep 20: Anti-Gaddafi fighters today said they had captured the airport and a garrison in the defeated Libyan despot's southern redoubt Sabha, as fighting raged in two of his northern strongholds.
The battlefield victories came as the United States and its allies prepared to meet on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York to discuss the future of the new Libya.
Muammar Gaddafi, for decades an outlandish fixture at the UN gathering with his tent and rambling speeches, will be absent in New York as the National Transitional Council rebels who ousted him are ushered into the spotlight.
NTC forces early today announced the capture of the airport and garrison at Sabha, a strategic desert city 800 kilometres south of Tripoli.
Fighting still raged in some quarters, but the pro-NTC forces would take total control of Sabha “in some hours,” said Mohammed Wardugu, spokesman for the “Desert Shield Brigade”.
They also had seized one of Gaddafi's senior generals and forced more than 300 of his mercenaries to flee, said Wardugu, brother of brigade commander Barka Wardugu.
“Our fighters ambushed them and killed, wounded or captured many,” he told AFP in the former rebel stronghold of Benghazi, without giving figures.
“General Belgacem Al-Abaaj, Gaddafi's intelligence chief in the Al-Khofra region, was captured” yesterday some 100 kilometres from Sabha, said Wardugu.
Abaaj, who had been sought by the forces of the National Transitional Council (NTC), was seized with members of his family who were travelling in five four-wheel drive vehicles.
“This general has committed many crimes in Al-Khofra (in Libya's far south) and when this town was liberated he fled towards Al-Jufra (centre),” where he commanded sabotage operations against the new regime forces, said Wardugu. AFP
