Libya rebel casualties mount in battle for Zliten

Libyans carry the coffin of one of the rebels killed during fighting with loyalist troops Sixteen rebel fighters have died in two days of fighting for Zliten, the last coastal city between insurgent-held Misrata and the capital, rebels said Friday, also claiming an attack in Tripoli itself. The rebels claim they infiltrated Tripoli and attacked an operations centre of senior officials, including the son of strongman Muammar Gaddafi, in which a top security figure was "seriously injured."
"Sixteen of our fighters have fallen as martyrs and 126 more have been wounded in fighting with loyalist troops in Zliten," said a rebel statement, with clashes said to be particularly heavy in the suburb of Souk al-Thulatha.
The insurgents have been trying for weeks to take Zliten, 200 kilometres (120 miles) from Tripoli and 40 kilometres west of Misrata.
An AFP correspondent among a group of foreign journalists taken on an escorted tour of Zliten reported loud explosions on Thursday on the front line just to the east.
The rebels say they have chased the bulk of Gaddafi's forces from Brega in the east and are poised to advance towards the capital from Misrata and their other western enclave in the Nafusa Mountains, southwest of Tripoli.
The Nafusa campaign is focused on taking Asabah, gateway to the garrison town of Gharyan on the highway into Tripoli.
An AFP correspondent embedded with rebels in Bir Ayad, on the plains below the mountains, said heavy winds on Thursday night and Friday ended exchanges of rocket fire.
A rebel commander, Nasser al-Aaib, said Gaddafi troops "are not moving because they don't know the terrain; they are afraid of being ambushed by the rebels, who know every inch of it."
Before the storm, Aaib said Gaddafi forces bombarded a rebel checkpoint a few hundred metres (yards) from the loyalist-held town of Bir Al-Ghanam. At least four rebel fighters were wounded, one seriously.
In a speech aired by state television late on Thursday, Gaddafi called the rebels' five-month-old uprising a "lost cause."
"The battle has been decided. It has been decided in favour of the masses and the people," he said.
"They cannot defeat us. They will be defeated and they will go home empty-handed.
"I will not talk to them. There will be no negotiations between me and them."
In a second speech aired by the channel, Gaddafi urged tribal leaders from Misrata, one of two rebel-held enclaves in the west, to "march on the city to liberate it."
The rebels said they had infiltrated armed and trained operatives into Tripoli and had attacked an operations centre where Gaddafi's son, Seif al-Islam, was among officials targeted.
"Yesterday (Thursday) in Tripoli, there was an attack on an operations centre of top regime officials, including Seif al-Islam Gaddafi," National Transitional Council (NTC) vice president Ali Essawy said after a meeting in Rome with Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini.
"One person was left seriously injured," he said, identifying the person as a high-ranking security official.
Frattini said the assault was a "rocket attack against an operations centre that was probably found concealed in a Tripoli hotel."
It was aimed at "top officials of the regime, including Gaddafi's son Seif, and the head of the secret service, Abdullah al-Senussi," Frattini added.
On Thursday, unconfirmed rumours swirled that rebels in Tripoli had tried to assassinate senior regime members that day.
Rebel commander Fawzi Bukatif said he had no knowledge of any such operation but added: "We expect things like that to happen."
He said there were "small groups... good fighters" in Tripoli and that "we have supplied them with weapons and grenades."
Since the revolution began in February, a number of Tripoli-based groups have broadcast videos purporting to show acts of civil disobedience in the heavily controlled capital.
Meanwhile, NATO has authorised a civilian air corridor between the rebel headquarters of Benghazi in the east and the Nafusa mountains, an official in the rebel-held southwest said.
A road that cuts through fields is used as a runway, according to an AFP correspondent who toured the area but cannot identify the location for security reasons.
Aircraft that use the runway often carry NTC members, the official said.
In Madrid, meanwhile, Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero urged the NTC to start preparing for a "new political era," in a meeting with senior NTC figure Mahmud Jibril.
He encouraged Jibril "to strengthen his organisation and his operations so it is in a position to successfully address the new political era that Libya will have to confront," according to his office.