DTN News - BATTLE FOR TRIPOLI: Rebels To Govern From Tripoli As Gaddafi Hunt Goes On
(NSI News Source Info) TORONTO, Canada - August 26, 2011: Libyan rebels announced a move to govern the country from Tripoli as they battled pockets of loyalists in their hunt for fugitive strongman Muammar Gaddafi, who taunted them from his hiding place.
Rumors of Gaddafi or his sons being cornered or sighted, swirled among excitable rebel fighters engaged in heavy machinegun and rocket exchanges. But even after his compound was overrun on Tuesday, hopes of a swift end to six months of war were still being frustrated by fierce rearguard actions.
Western powers have demanded Gaddafi's surrender and worked to help the opposition start developing the trappings of government and bureaucracy lacking in the oil-rich state after 42 years of an eccentric personality cult.
The United States and South Africa struck a deal to allow the release of $1.5 billion in frozen funds for humanitarian aid and other civilian needs, U.N. diplomats said.
But with loyalists holding out in the capital, in Gaddafi's coastal home city and deep in the inland desert, violence could go on for some time, testing the rebel government's ability to keep order when it moves from its eastern stronghold Benghazi.
"I proclaim the beginning of the resumption of the work of the executive office in Tripoli," Ali Tarhouni, in charge of oil and financial matters for the rebel council, said in Tripoli.
The shift is seen as a crucial step to smoothing over rifts in the country, fragmented by regional and tribal divisions, particularly between east and west.
Gaddafi taunted his enemies and their Western backers, calling on his supporters to fight back in the city in his latest broadcast rallying cry.
"The tribes ... must march on Tripoli," Gaddafi said in an audio message aired on a sympathetic TV channel. "Do not leave Tripoli to those rats, kill them, defeat them quickly.
"The enemy is delusional, NATO is retreating," he shouted, sounding firmer and clearer than in a similar speech released on Wednesday. Though his enemies believe Gaddafi, 69, is still in the capital, they fear he could flee by long-prepared escape routes, using tunnels and bunkers, to rally an insurgency.
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