TRIPOLI, July 22: Sixteen rebel fighters have been killed and another 126 wounded in two days of fighting for control of Zliten, the last coastal city between insurgent-held Misrata and the Libyan capital, rebels said on Friday.

The news came amid rebel claims they had infiltrated Tripoli and attacked an operations centre of top officials, including the son of strongman Muammar Qadhafi, 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 several weeks to take Zliten, 200 kilometres from the capital.

A 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.

Columns of smoke were clearly visible from the town, 40 kilometres west of Misrata.

The rebels say they have chased the bulk of Qadhafi's forces from Brega in the east and are poised for advances 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.

A correspondent embedded with rebels in Bir Ayad, in the plains below the mountains, said heavy winds on Thursday night and Friday brought exchanges of rocket fire to a halt.

A rebel commander, Nasser al-Aaib, said Qadhafi 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 began on Thursday night, Aaib said Qadhafi 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, Qadhafi 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, Qadhafi called on 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 Qadhafi'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 Qadhafi,” National Transitional Council (NTC) vice president Ali al-Isawi 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 official within the regime security services.

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 Qadhafi's son Seif, and the head of the secret service, Abdullah al-Senussi,” Frattini added.—AFP